1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act<\/p>\n\n\n\n
_<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In their article \u201cIntegrating Race, Transforming Feminist Disability Studies\u201d, Sami Schalk and Jima B. Kim reference the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act: \u201cAlongside antiblackness, anti-immigrant sentiment, and misogyny, discourses of disability and disease also gave narrative traction to antiwelfare policies such as the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). As Sanford F. Schram observes, PRWORA contributed considerably to the \u2018medicalization\u2019 of welfare\u201d (44).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In August of 1996, United States President Bill Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act into law (Watts & Astone 409). The PRWORA was a result of the Republican shift in Congress from 1994 and was pushed with the goals of conserving taxpayer money (O\u2019Connor 4) and restoring the \u201ctraditional\u201d American family structure (Watts & Astone 409). During his presidential campaign, Clinton pledged that he would \u201c\u2018end welfare as we know it\u2019\u201d (O\u2019Connor 4). The American welfare structure had continued to evolve since the New Deal, but had fallen out of favor with much of the American public in the 1980s and 1990s (O\u2019Connor 4), during which many people used welfare as a scapegoat for unemployment and unmarried or absent parents (Watts & Astone 409). Welfare was heavily associated with minority groups, specifically Black people, who were identified in the 1995 Republican welfare reform bill from which the PRWORA stemmed as the \u201cmorally fallen\u201d (Watts & Astone 409). PRWORA introduced Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a block grant program that imposed a time constraint on welfare and transferred power to the states to determine various aspects of their individual welfare programs (Watts & Astone 409-410). TANF replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), a federal program created in 1935 that primarily transferred funding to single mothers (Currie & Cole 971) and of which two-thirds of its recipients were children (Page & Larner 20). TANF placed a five-year limit on the amount of aid an individual or that individual\u2019s family could receive as adults and allowed the States the power to lessen that five-year period, amongst various other restrictions (Watts & Astone 410). One such restriction was imposed upon disabled children\u2019s eligibility for aid from SSI, or Supplemental Security Income (Watts & Astone 412). Before the PRWORA was signed into law, a child with a disability could undergo an IFA, or individual functional assessment, in order to determine whether or not they qualified for SSI benefits (Watts & Astone 412). The passage of the PRWORA removed this option altogether, and all children who had qualified for Supplemental Security Income with an IFA subsequently lost their benefits (Watts & Astone 412). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Works Cited<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Currie, Janet, and Nancy Cole. \u201cWelfare and Child Health: The Link Between AFDC Participation and Birth Weight.\u201d The American Economic Review, vol. 83, no. 4, 1993, pp. 971\u201385. JSTOR, http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/2117589. Accessed 17 Oct. 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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O\u2019Connor, Brendon. \u201cThe Protagonists and Ideas Behind the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996: The Enactment of a Conservative Welfare System.\u201d Social Justice<\/em>, vol. 28, no. 4 (86), 2001, pp. 4\u201332. JSTOR<\/em>, http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/29768105. Accessed 17 Oct. 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n _<\/p>\n\n\n\n Page, Stephen B., and Mary B. Larner. \u201cIntroduction to the AFDC Program.\u201d The Future of Children<\/em>, vol. 7, no. 1, 1997, pp. 20\u201327. JSTOR<\/em>, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.2307\/1602574. Accessed 17 Oct. 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n _<\/p>\n\n\n\n Schalk, Sami, and Jima B. Kim. \u201cIntegrating Race, Transforming Feminist Disability Studies.\u201d Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 46, issue 1, Autumn 2020, pp. 31-55, The University of Chicago Press, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1086\/709213. Accessed 17 Oct. 2025. <\/p>\n\n\n\n _<\/p>\n\n\n\n Watts, Jerry, and Nan Marie Astone. Contemporary Sociology<\/em>, vol. 26, no. 4, 1997, pp. 409\u201315. JSTOR<\/em>, https:\/\/doi.org\/10.2307\/2655075. Accessed 17 Oct. 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act _ In their article \u201cIntegrating Race, Transforming Feminist Disability Studies\u201d, Sami Schalk and Jima B. Kim reference the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act: \u201cAlongside antiblackness, anti-immigrant sentiment, and misogyny, discourses of disability and disease also gave narrative traction to antiwelfare policies such as the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":148,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-305","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_hostinger_reach_plugin_has_subscription_block":false,"_hostinger_reach_plugin_is_elementor":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/creativeportfolio.org\/elizae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/creativeportfolio.org\/elizae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/creativeportfolio.org\/elizae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creativeportfolio.org\/elizae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creativeportfolio.org\/elizae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/creativeportfolio.org\/elizae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311,"href":"https:\/\/creativeportfolio.org\/elizae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/305\/revisions\/311"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/creativeportfolio.org\/elizae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/creativeportfolio.org\/elizae\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}