Midterm Review

POSC 459 — Social Welfare Politics and Policy · Week 8, Monday 12 October 2026

Accessible text version of the Week 8 Monday slides — same content in linear order, with no slide-scaling container. Midterm review of Weeks 1 through 7; the exam is Wednesday 14 October.

POSC 459 — Social Welfare Politics and Policy Week 8 · Monday, October 12

Thirty minutes of review, then your questions

Today

1:00	Wednesday: the format, and your program
1:06	Weeks 1 through 7 in eleven slides
1:28	How to write a blue-book answer
1:30	Your questions
2:10	Before Wednesday

Wednesday, October 14

When	1:00–2:15, GH 305. Time is called at 2:15
Format	5 of 8 IDs (25) · 1 of 5 essays (50) · your program (25)
Clock	Read 5 min · IDs 15 · essay 35 · your program 15 · reread 5
Bring	A blue book. A pen or pencil
Closed	Book, notes, devices, AI. The exam is RED

Name on the cover only. Label every answer: I.3, II.B, III.

Part III: your program

Place it. Campbell’s tier · Howard’s four questions: who qualifies, who pays, who delivers, is it enough
The Week 5 tests. Who built it, and to do or hold down what? Whom has it organized, and what has that won or blocked?

One fact from a source you read for the memo, document named · two course concepts by name · Column B stays an assumption

No program on file? Yours is Social Security. Email me a pick by Tuesday, 11:59 p.m. and I’ll use yours

Finish the sentence

Rate is not ______.

Flow is not ______.

Prevalence is not ______.

Week 1. Then one number for each.

Both columns are true

	Both true	Source
Rate is not composition	Black poverty rate 18.8%, White non-Hispanic 7.3% · Whites are 66.2% of the poor	Rank, table 5.1
Flow is not stock	52.5% of spells end within a year · most of the poor right now have been poor a long time	Rank, table 4.1
Prevalence is not penalty	19 of 29 rich democracies have more unemployment · 24 punish it less	Brady and colleagues

65% of Americans live in a means-tested household at some point between 20 and 65

Week 1 · Rank, Eppard, and Bullock, Section I

Be able to: read a poverty table and say which column the speaker is standing on.

What the line counts, and what it can’t

Orshansky, 1965: a cheap food budget × 3, cash income only
Official rate 12.6% (1970) · 15.1% (2010) · 10.5% (2019). Spending per person $1,015 → $3,419 (1980–2017)
Never counted: SNAP, the EITC, housing aid. Child poverty, supplemental measure, 9.7% → 5.2% → 12.4% (2020–22)
The leak: TANF, 22 cents of the dollar reaches a family as cash

Week 2 · Desmond chs. 1–2

Be able to: explain the flatline twice, as a measurement story and as a leak story.

Is it small? Six tools, one hidden state

Social insurance · Grants · Tax expenditures · Regulation · Loan guarantees · Tort law

Share of GDP, 1997	Gross	Net of taxes on benefits	Plus tax expenditures
United States	15.8%	15.0%	16.4%
17-nation average	25.6%	21.3%	21.6%

Desmond: the market takes it back. Overdraft fees $11 billion (2019); 9% of account holders pay 84%
Average spending, poverty near the bottom of the rich world. Where does the money go?

Weeks 1 and 3 · Howard ch. 1 · Desmond chs. 3–4

Two tiers, sorted by work

Upper tier: social insurance	Lower tier: “welfare”
Social Security · Medicare · Disability Insurance · UI · workers’ comp	Medicaid · the EITC · SSI · TANF · SNAP · housing

Cracks: TANF for three, $201 Texas · $636 Connecticut · UI reaches under 40%
Campbell: work history sorts the tiers. One injury, three outcomes
Soss: a husband leaves → TANF. A husband dies → survivors’ insurance

Week 2 · Howard ch. 2 · Week 6 · Campbell chs. 1–3

Be able to: place a program, name one that breaks the map, and say what sorted it.

Cash follows work. Food follows need. Housing follows the budget.

	Income	Food	Housing
Who qualifies	Workers	Anyone in need	In need, if there’s money
Enough?	TANF: 68% → 22% of poor families	SNAP 36 million	38 units per 100

Welfare avoidance: about $142 billion a year unclaimed
Homeowner subsidies $193 billion · direct housing aid $53 billion (2020)

Weeks 6 and 7 · Desmond ch. 5 · Howard, Who Cares, chs. 5–7

Be able to: say whether deservingness explains this table, and test it on one case.

Who built it, and when?

Standard story: 1935 and 1965, unified Democrats
Howard’s recount: about fifty programs since 1913; divided government built eighteen

Who held power, 1900–2000	Social insurance, grants	Tax breaks, regulation, loans
Unified Democratic	15	13
Republican president, divided government	5	8

Layering: ERISA (1974) · the ADA (1990) · the Child Tax Credit (1997), each built to hold down an older program

“Republicans designed new social programs in order to curb existing programs.” (Howard, p. 89)

Weeks 4 and 5 · Howard chs. 3–4

Policy feedback: when effect becomes cause

“New policies create a new politics.” (Schattschneider, in Pierson)

	Resources and incentives	Interpretation
Interest groups	Spoils · organizing niches · access	Policy learning
Mass publics	Lock-in	Visibility and traceability

Lock-in, tested: Bush’s personal accounts never reach a floor vote. Today’s workers would pay for two retirements
Visibility: a tax break arrives as a line on a return. Nobody traces it to government

Weeks 4 and 5 · Pierson 1993, figure 1 · Berkowitz and DeWitt

1935: payroll financing, the bet. Old Age Assistance, means-tested and state-run, the hedge
1948: the hedge pays 50 percent more. Then 1950 coverage · 1972 indexing · the 1983 rescue
Medicare, 1965: Ball’s “fallback” after national health insurance lost. The price: pay providers what they asked

“the nation’s most important antipoverty program, in part because it did not target its benefits exclusively to the poor” (p. 271)

Week 5 · Berkowitz and DeWitt · Oberlander

Favorite sons, political orphans

	Social Security	AFDC	Food Stamps
1981 cuts, by 1984	1.5%	16%	19%

The EITC: 7.4 → 19.3 million families, 1985–2000. “No other U.S. social program grew faster”
Medicaid’s three seeds: medical indigency · comprehensive benefits · the federal match
Waxman: options, then mandates, inside omnibus bills. “Anything except welfare”
Medicaid now: 1 in 5 Americans · 70% of nursing-home residents

Weeks 6 and 7 · Howard ch. 5 · Grogan and Andrews

Be able to: explain why two programs for the poor grew while the rest were cut.

Laboratories, or cryogenic chambers?

Workers’ compensation: no federal money, no federal rules, for a century

1972	1975	1980	1988	late 1990s
6.9	9.4	12.1	12.2	12.8

average state score, of 19 essential elements

States improved under threat of national standards. Stopped when the threat passed
Medicaid grew with a match. Who sued over the ACA: governor’s party .8, cost .15

Week 7 · Howard ch. 8 · Grogan and Andrews

A blue-book answer has four parts

Claim	Answer the question in one sentence. Make it the first sentence
Concept	Name it, in the author’s term: lock-in, layering, the match, the hidden welfare state
Evidence	A case, a number, a year. “Social Security down 1.5 percent, AFDC 16”
So what	What the case shows that the concept predicted, or didn’t

Weak: everything you remember about the topic. Strong: one argument, two pieces of evidence, a name on each.

Your questions

Week		Readings
1	Who are the poor?	Rank, Eppard, and Bullock, Section I
2	Why so many poor?	Desmond chs. 1–2 · Howard ch. 2
3	American exceptionalism?	Howard ch. 1 · Desmond chs. 3–4
4	Political development	Howard ch. 3 · Pierson
5	Social Security and Medicare	Howard ch. 4 · Berkowitz and DeWitt · Oberlander
6	TANF, SNAP, the EITC	Howard ch. 5 · Campbell chs. 1–3 · Desmond ch. 5
7	Housing, income, Medicaid	Howard, Who Cares, chs. 5–7 · Grogan and Andrews · Howard ch. 8

Any week, any reading, your program, the format

Before Wednesday

No program? Email me a pick by Tuesday, 11:59 p.m.

Accommodation letter not sent yet? Tonight

Reading Journal Checkpoint 1 is due Wednesday, 11:59 p.m. Five entries

Office hours today, 3:00–4:00 and 5:30–6:30

Wednesday: write it down.

If the room goes quiet

Which cell? · Name the program · Try it

Backup drills for the question period

Which cell?

The AARP sells Medigap policies
Bush’s personal accounts never reach a floor vote
Democrats answer Studebaker with a bigger Social Security check
Medicaid for poor children at Title IV, Subtitle B, Part 2 of a budget act

Pierson’s figure. Answer before the next slide.

Which cell: answers

	Cell	Why
1	Interest groups · resources: an organizing niche	Thin elderly health benefits gave the AARP a reason to exist
2	Mass publics · lock-in	Current workers would finance two retirements at once
3	Elites · policy learning	The tool you already have becomes the answer to the next risk
4	Visibility and traceability, used in reverse	“You can’t hit what you can’t see”

One concept, four programs.

Name the program

The hedge that outpaid the bet in 1948
“No other U.S. social program grew faster”
The 1965 afterthought that now covers one in five Americans
The social insurance program left to the states for a century
68 families per hundred in poverty, then 22

Answer before the next slide.

Name the program: answers

	Program	Week
1	Old Age Assistance	5
2	The EITC	6
3	Medicaid	7
4	Workers’ compensation	7
5	AFDC, then TANF	2 and 7

Five programs, four weeks. The exam asks about the course, not one week.

Try it: three minutes

“Programs for the poor are poor programs.” Agree or disagree?

Claim · Concept · Evidence · So what

Four lines on paper. Two people read theirs.