Policy Implications of the Camden WIN Study

摘要

Part I presents direct lessons for policy of the substantive findings of research on the Work Incentive Program in Camden, N.J. Cultural orientations of families override any other factors in determining the family's welfare history and the type and duration of work sought. The fundamental orientations are termed traditional and modernizing. The first maintains the priority of family life over any other social participation and the second characterizes the family seeking to locate itself productively in a political and economic civic community transcending the family. Religious organizational involvements are salient discriminants of these two styles of life. The Work Incentive Program itself is modified in the light of these cultural orientations at the local level through a negotiation between the government agencies and family members. Part II develops general concepts for the design of poverty and manpower programs. Poverty is defined as an ideology. Three distinct types of impoverished are identified: the unemployed proletariat generated by failures in the system of production; the abandoned dependents generated by changes in the family structure and norms; and outcasts generated by strains in the system of ethnic and race relations. Each type calls for a distinct meliorative approach. Poverty is a condition of the total society and therefore, programs targeted on the poor alone will be ineffective.