"American social welfare policy has produced a health system with skyrocketing costs, a disability insurance program that consigns many otherwise productive people to lives of inactivity, and a welfare program that attracts wide criticism. Making Social Welfare Policy in America explains how this happened by examining the historical development of three key programs—Social Security Disability Insurance, Medicare, and Temporary Aid to Needy Families. Edward D. Berkowitz traces the developments that led to each program’s creation."

Book Authority

"The durability of the American social welfare state is the focus of Edward Berkowitz’s Making Social Welfare Policy in America. This coda of a decades-long investigation into social welfare policy is a carefully constructed investigation of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), Medicare, and Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Berkowitz stresses the unique, idiosyncratic, and often unforeseen factors at work in determining critical changes to these three important social welfare programs over time. He painstakingly traces the political debates around the origins and development of these programs and shows that significant changes often turned on a knife-edge and were fully grounded in the political environment of the time."

Perspectives on Politics

"[Making Social Welfare Policy in America] is a definitive account of three essential US policy developments during the past half-century: Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), Medicare, and Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF)...this volume is required reading for students and scholars of social policy...Highly recommended."

D. Stoesz | Choice

“Berkowitz explores the political dynamics and policy evolution of the modern American welfare state. Berkowitz, a historian, makes clear that he does not seek to formulate or test grand theories, but instead to engage with the complicated dynamics involved in the policymaking process… This study is a meticulous investigation of the complex politics surround these… policies. It will be of great interest to scholars studying social policy in the United States.”

Perspectives on Politics

“Berkowitz offers a lively and useful explanation for the intractable social policy dilemmas that the United States faces today and helps us to understand how a society and polity with such a persistently anti-statist culture came to possess such a substantial—yet distinctly uneven—welfare state. We need this addition to the corpus, and it is uniquely the product of its author’s career-long engagement with and immersion in the politics of American social policy.”

Gareth Davies, Oxford University

“Making Social Welfare Policy in America is a masterful account of the history of US social policy making since the 1950s. Berkowitz possesses an unparalleled knowledge of the details of the evolution of key programs, and the book will undoubtedly take its place as an essential guide to the development of the US welfare state.”

Eric M. Patashnik, Brown University