The Stratification of Social Citizenship: Gender and Federalism in the Formation of Old Age Insurance and Aid to Dependent Children

Journal of Policy History

Volumn 11, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 31-58

  Mettler, Suzanne ^a  

^a SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84894990522     PISSN: 08980306     EISSN: 15284190     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0898030600003055     Document Type: Article

References (148)

1. Gosta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Princeton, 1990).
2. For a comprehensive review of literature on gender and welfare states, see Ann Orloff, “Gender in the Welfare State,” American Sociological Review 22 (1996): 51-78.
3. Marilyn Lake, guest editor, “Citizenship: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Ethnicity,” Special Issue, Social Politics 2 (Summer 1995)
4. Ann Shola Orloff, “Gender and the Social Rights of Citizenship: The Comparative Analysis of Gender Relations and Welfare States” American Sociological Review 58 (June 1993): 303-28
5. Ursula Vogel, “Is Citizenship Gender-Specific?” in The Frontiers of Citizenship, ed. Ursula Vogel and Michael Moran (New York, 1991)
6. Diane Sainsbury, ed. Gendering Welfare States (London, 1994)
7. Diane Sainsbury, Gender, Equality, and Welfare States (Cambridge, 1996).
8. “Social citizenship” refers to the incorporation of legal citizens into the polity through programs for economic security and welfare. See Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (New York, 1983), 64-94
9. T. H. Marshall “Citizenship and Social Class,” in Class, Citizenship, and Social Development (New York, 1965), 65-122
10. Judith Shklar, American Citizenship: The Quest for Inclusion (Cambridge, Mass. 1991).
11. On the “two-tiered” character of the New Deal welfare state in relation to gender, see Nancy Fraser, Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse, and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (Minneapolis, 1989), and
12. Barbara J. Nelson, “The Origins of the Two-Channel Welfare State: Workmen's Compensation and Mothers' Aid,” in Women, the State, and Welfare, ed. Linda Gordon (Madison, Wis. 1990).
13. Theda Skocpol, “The Limits of the New Deal System and the Roots of Contemporary Welfare Dilemmas,” in The Politics of Social Policy in the United States, ed. Margaret Weir, Ann Shola Orloff, and Theda Skocpol (Princeton, 1988), 293-312
14. Robert C. Lieberman, “Race and the Organization of Welfare Policy,” in Classifying by Race, ed. Paul E. Peterson (Princeton, 1995), 156-87
15. Jill Quadagno, “From Old-Age Assistance to Supplemental Security Income: The Political Economy of Relief in the South, 1935-1972,” in The Politics of Social Policy in the United States, 293–312.
16. The concept of “unintended consequences” is hardly new in the analysis of public policy development, but the relevance of institutional administrative arrangements to such outcomes has not been examined sufficiently, and the unintended consequences of policy design for gender have been ignored entirely. Typically, in the public choice approach to policy analysis, the term “unintended consequences” is used to refer to “externalities,” otherwise known as impacts that affect those who did not consent to them. Such effects are usually understood as resulting from unanticipated environmental effects. See David L. Weimer and Aidan R. Vining, Policy Analysis: Concepts and Practice (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1992), 57-62
17. The classic study in this regard is Jeffrey L. Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky, Implementation (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1974)
18. see also Theodore J. Lowi, Benjamin Ginsberg, et al. Poliscide (Lanham, Md. 1990).
19. Neither of these approaches gives much heed to the politics of policy design, and thus they neglect to explain how such seemingly irrational decisions were made. The best of the recent literature on policy design, though it departs from the public choice assumptions about selfinterested individuals seeking to maximize utility, still largely overlooks the importance of institutional arrangements for policy delivery. See Anne L. Schneider and Helen Ingram, “Policy Design: Elements, Premises, and Strategies,” in Policy Theory and Policy Evaluation, ed. Stuart S. Nagel (Westport, Conn. 1990), 77-101
20. Anne L. Schneider and Helen Ingram, “Social Construction of Target Populations: Implications for Politics and Policy,” American Political Science Review 87 (June 1993): 334-47. Thus, this article attempts what has not been done elsewhere: to examine how policy officials make decisions about institutional arrangements that subsequently result in unintended consequences, in this case in terms of gender.
21. For a full analysis of the implementation and implications of each program in terms of gender, see Suzanne Mettler, Dividing Citizens: Gender and Federalism in New Deal Public Policy (Ithaca, N.Y. 1998).
22. Linda Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890- 1935 (New York, 1994)
23. see also Robyn Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935 (New York, 1991)
24. Alice Kessler-Harris, “Designing Women and Old Fools: The Construction of the Social Security Amendments of 1939,” in U.S. History as Women's History, ed. Linda Kerber, Alice Kessler-Harris, and Kathryn Kish Sklar (Chapel Hill, N.C. 1995), 87-106
25. Gwendolyn Mink, The Wages of Motherhood: Inequality in the Welfare State, 1917-1942 (Ithaca, N.Y. 1995)
26. Molly Ladd-Taylor, Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890- 1930 (Urbana, III. 1994)
27. Eileen Boris, Home to Work: Motherhood and the Politics of Industrial Homework in the United States (New York, 1994).
28. Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass. 1992)
29. Ann S. Orloff, “Gender in Early U.S. Social Policy,” Journal of Policy History 3 (1991): 249-81.
30. Theda Skocpol and Edwin Amenta, “Did Capitalists Shape Social Security?” American Sociological Review 50 (August 1985): 573.
31. See also Theda Skocpol with G. John Ikenberry, “The Road to Social Security,” in Social Policy in the United States (Princeton, 1995), 158-59.
32. On the interaction of ideas and institutions, and the role of political learning, see Hugh Heclo, “Ideas, Interests, and Institutions,” in The Dynamics of American Politics, ed. Lawrence C. Dodd and Calvin Jillson (Boulder, Colo. 1994), 366-92.
33. See also Rogers Smith, “Ideas, Institutions, and Strategic Choice,” Polity 28 (Fall 1995): 135-40.
34. Ann Shola Orloff, The Politics of Pensions: A Comparative Analysis of Britain, Canada, and the United States, 1880-1940 (Madison, Wis. 1993), 121-51
35. Skocpol, Protecting Soldiersand Mothers
36. Michael B. Katz, in the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (New York, 1986).
37. Abraham Holtzman, The Townsend Movement: A Political Study (New York, 1963)
38. Alan Brinkley, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression (New York, 1982).
39. Kenneth Casebeer, “The Workers' Unemployment Insurance Bill: American Social Wage, Labor Organization, and Legal Ideology,” in Labor Law in America, ed. Christopher Tomlins and Andrew King (Baltimore, 1992).
40. Frances Perkins, The Roosevelt 1 Knew (New York, 1946), 284-85.
41. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Message to Congress Reviewing the Broad Objectives and Accomplishments of the Administration, June 8, 1934,” in National Conference on Social Welfare, ed. The Report of the Committee on Economic Security of 1935 and Other Basic Documents Relating to the Development of the Social Security Act (Washington, D.C. 1985), 138.
42. One public assistance program, Old Age Assistance, was also considered to be the appropriate source of aid for retired wage-earners until the contributory program itself matured. Social Security Board (SSB), Social Security in America: The Factual Background of the Social Security Act as Summarized from Staff Reports to the Committee on Economic Security (Washington, D.C. 1937), 189-90.
43. Francine D. Blau and Marianne A. Ferber, The Economics of Women, Men, and Work (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1986), 70.
44. See Mettler, Dividing Citizens.
45. Roosevelt, “Message to Congress … June 8, 1934.”
46. James T. Patterson, The New Deal and the States (Princeton, 1969), 3-4
47. Reminiscencesof Thomas H. Eliot, Oral History Collection of Columbia University (hereafter OHC), 22.
48. Committee on Economic Security (CES), “The Report on Economic Security,” in The Report of the Committee on Economic Security of 1935, ed. National Conference on Social Welfare, 4–5
49. Ann Shola Orloff, “The Political Origins of America's Belated Welfare State,” in The Politics of Social Policy, ed. Weir, Orloff, and Skocpol, 37–80.
50. See also Reminiscences of Arthur ]. AItmeyer, OHC, 105, 187–88
51. Skocpol and Amenta, “Did Capitalists Shape Social Security?” 572–75.
52. Blanche D. Coll, Safety Net: Welfare and Social Security, 1929-1979 (New Brunswick, N.J. 1995), 21–33
53. Patterson, The New Deal and the States, chap. 3
54. Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled, 188–91.
55. Just how much the Supreme Court might attempt to restrain national policymaking was not yet clear at this point. In fact, Court decisions in 1934 suggested that a majority of the Court might view the New Deal with sympathy. See Alfred H. Kelly, Winfred A. Harbison, and Herman Belz, eds. The American Constitution: Its Origins and Development, vol. 2 (New York, 1991), 475. Only in 1935, after the Roosevelt administration's Economic Security Bill had already been sent to Congress, did the Court begin to overturn important pieces of New Deal legislation.
56. The most important examples are Schecter Poultry Co. v. United States 295 U.S. 495 (1935), through which the National Industrial Recovery Act was declared unconstitutional, and
57. United States v. Butler 297 U.S. 1 (1936), in which the Agricultural Adjustment Act suffered the same fate. Because of this timing, scholars must be careful not to overstate the role of Supreme Court scrutiny in shaping decisions by the Committee on Economic Security.
58. “Extract from a Memorandum by Jane Perry Clark on Analysis of Types of Federal State Relationships in Relation to a Program of Economic Security,” Jane Perry Clark file, Records of the Committee on Economic Security (CES), Staff Reports, 1934-35, box 17, Records of the Social Security Administration (SSA), Record Group (RG) 47, National Archives (NA)
59. Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew, 286–87.
60. Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew, 286–92
61. Edwin Witte, Development of the Social Security Act (Madison, Wis. 1962), 50-66, 116-18.
62. Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled, 146.
63. Reminiscences of Eveline Burns, OHC, 52
64. Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong, insuring the Essentials: Minimum Wage Plus Social lnsurance-A Living Wage Program (New York, 1932), xvii, 436
65. Reminiscences of Eveline Burns, 52.
66. Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong, “Memorandum on Section 5: Old Age Retirement,” 3–4, CES, Staff Reports, 1934-35, box 23, RG 47, NA
67. Irving Bernstein, A Caring Society, 50.
68. Armstrong, Insuring the Essentials, 145–48.
69. See Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong, “Possibilities of a Unified System of Insurance Against Loss of Earnings,” pp. 1–4, 8, CES, Staff Reports, 1934-35, box 17, RG 47, NA
70. Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong, “Estimated Number of Workers Covered by Old Age Annuity System,” CES, Staff Correspondence, 1934–35, box 12, RG 47, NA
71. J. Douglas Brown and Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong, “Plan for Federal Compulsory Contributory Pension Insurance,” CES, Staff Reports, 1934-1935, box 17, RG 47, NA.
72. See Reminiscences of Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong, OHC, 98.
73. Reminiscences of Eveline Burns, 52–55.
74. Armstrong, “Memorandum on Section 5: Old Age Retirement,” p. 1, CES, Staff Reports, 1934–35, box 1, RG 47, NA.
75. “Summary of Discussion of the Old Age Security Committee of the Technical Board,” 26 September 1934, CES, General Records of the Executive Director and Staff, box 1, RG 47, NA
76. Reminiscences of Thomas H. Eliot, 30
77. Arthur J. Altmeyer, The Formative Years of Social Security (Madison, Wis. 1966), 25.
78. Reminiscences of Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong, 74–76.
79. Martin, Madam Secretary, 348
80. Reminiscences of Thomas H. Eliot, 29–30.
81. Memo from Dudley O. McGovney for Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong, “Answer to Questions on Constitutional Chances of Three Schemes Outlined in Mr. Thomas H. Eliot's Memorandum,” 22 October 1934
82. CES, Staff Correspondence, 1934-1935, box 12, RG 47, NA.
83. Reminiscences of Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong, 76, 93, 95.
84. “Outline of Old Age Security Program Proposed by Staff,” 9 November 1934, CES, General Records of the Executive Director and Staff, 1934-1935, box 1, RG 47, NA
85. J. Douglas Brown, An American Philosophy of Social Security (Princeton, 1972), 9-16.
86. Brown, An American Philosophy o/Social Security, 16–17
87. Reminiscences of Barbara Nachtreib Armstrong, 68, 104–5.
88. Brown, An American Philosophy of Social Security, 21–22.
89. Already, fourteen other nations had enacted old-age insurance plans complete with survivors' insurance, but the CES reported that though such a system was desirable, further investigation was needed before proposing an American counterpart. SSB, Social Security in America, 183, 204.
90. Mark Leff, “Taxing the ‘Forgotten Man’: The Politics of Social Security Finance in the New Deal,” Journal of American History 70 (September 1983): 378, 381.
91. Brown, An American Philosophy of Social Security, 20–21
92. Reminiscences of Barbara Nachtrieb Armstrong, 168.
93. SSB, Social Security in America, 160.
94. Eveline Burns, Toward Social Security (New York, 1936), 111-12.
95. Joanne L. Goodwin, “An American Experiment in Paid Motherhood: The Implementation of Mothers' Pensions in Early Twentieth-Century Chicago,” Gender and History 4 (Autumn 1992): 330-34
96. Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled, 49–50
97. Paul H. Douglas, Social Security in the United States (New York, 1939), 187-92.
98. Winifred Bell, Aid to Dependent Children (New York, 1965), 19.
99. Grace Abbott, “Recent Trends in Mothers' Aid,” Social Service Review 8 (1934): 210
100. Lela B. Costin, Two Sisters for Social Justice (Urbana, III. 1983), 208.
101. Reminiscences of Katharine Lenroot, OHC, 33–34, 86.
102. Katharine Lenroot, “Preliminary and Confidential Suggestions for Development of a Children's Program as Part of a Federal Security Program,” p. 1, Abbott Papers, box 61, file 3, UC.
103. Katharine Lenroot, “Special Measures for Children's Security,” Abbott Papers, box 61, file 3, UC; Reminiscences of Katharine Lenroot, 92.
104. Lenroot, “Preliminary and Confidential Suggestions,” 2
105. Public Law 271, 74th Cong. 1st sess. (14 August 1935), Social Security Act of 1935, Title IV, Section 402 (a)
106. Burns, Toward Social Security, 111–12.
107. SSB, Social Security in America, Table 49, 235–36
108. testimony of Katharine Lenroot, Congress, House Ways and Means Committee, Hearings on the Economic Security Act, H.R.412 0, 74th Cong. 1st sess. 26 January 1935, 267.
109. CES, “Report of the Committee on Economic Security,” 26–27, 36-37.
110. Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled, 257.
111. Reminiscences of Katharine Lenroot, 99.
112. Lenroot, “Preliminary and Confidential Suggestions,” 2.
113. Reminiscences of Katharine Lenroot, 107–11
114. Lenroot, “Preliminary and Confidential Suggestions,” 4
115. Mink, The Wages of Motherhood, passim
116. Gordon, Pitied But Not Entitled, 102
117. Christopher Howard, “Sowing the Seeds of ‘Welfare’: The Transformation of Mothers' Pensions, 1900-1940,” Journal of Policy History 4 (1992): 210.
118. Grace Abbott, From Relief to Social Security (New York, 1966), 279-80.
119. Perkins, The Roosevelt I Knew, 297–98.
120. Witte, Development of the Social Security Act, 164.
121. E. E. Schattschneider, The Semisovereign People (New York, 1960)
122. Grant McConnell, Private Power and American Democracy (New York, 1966).
123. Christopher L. Tomlins, “Law, Police, and the Pursuit of Happiness in the American Republic,” in Studies in American Political Development 4 (1990): 3-34
124. William J. Novak, “Intellectual Origins of the State Police Power: The Common Law Vision of a Well-Regulated SocietyLegal History Program, Working Papers, Series 3 (Madison, Wis.: Institute for Legal Studies, University of Wisconsin, 1989).
125. David B. Walker, The Rebirth of Federalism (Chatham, N.J. 1995), 69.
126. “County Reports of Administration of Public Assistance Programs,” p. 7, file 620.6/ 1940, Records of the Executive Director, Subject Files, 1935-40, box 274, RG 47, NA. For a fuller treatment of such rules during this period, see Mettler, Dividing Citizens, 164-65.
127. Social Security Board (SSB), Bureau of Public Assistance, Families Receiving Aid to Dependent Children, by Agnes Leisy, October 1942, Part I, Public Assistance Report No. 7, (Washington, D.C.: Social Security Board, Bureau of Public Assistance, 1943).
128. Bell, Aid to Dependent Children, 42–48
129. Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, Regulating the Poor (New York, 1971), 134-41.
130. Southern states used such procedures to maintain the racial order. See Quadagno, “From Old-Age Assistance to Supplemental Security Income.”
131. SSB, Bureau of Public Assistance, Families Receiving Aid to Dependent Children, 3–5.
132. Quadagno, “From Old-Age Assistance to Supplemental Security Income.”
133. SSB, “The Comparability of Public Assistance Payments and Social Insurance Benefits,” by Jacob Fisher, Social Security Bulletin 7 (December 1944): 11.
134. David B. Robertson and Dennis R. Judd, The Development of American Public Policy: The Structure of Policy Restraint (Glenview, 111. 1989), 31.
135. David Brian Robertson, “The Bias of American Federalism: The Limits of Welfare- State Development in the Progressive Era,” Journal of Policy History 1 (1989): 261-91
136. William Graebner, “Federalism in the Progressive Era: A Structural Interpretation of Reform,” Journal of American History 54 (1977): 331-57.
137. Paul E. Peterson, “Who Should Do What? Divided Responsibility in the Federal System,” Brookings Review (Spring 1995): 6-11
138. Paul E. Peterson, City Limits (Chicago, 1981).
139. Douglas, Social Security in the United States, 428.
140. This topic is substantiated more fully in Mettler, Dividing Citizens, especially 143-79.
141. On these changes, see Martha F. Davis, Brutal Need: Lawyers and the Welfare Rights Movement, 1960-1973 (New Haven, Conn. 1993)
142. Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (New York, 1979), 264-361
143. King v. Smith 392 U.S. 309 (1968)
144. Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618 (1969)
145. Goldberg v. Kelley, 397 U.S. 254 (1970).
146. Steven M. Teles, Whose Welfare: AFDC and Elite Politics (Lawrence, Kan. 1996), 119— 46
147. Irene Lurie, “State Welfare Policy,” in The State of the States, ed. Carl E. Van Horn (Washington, D.C. 1996).
148. For the use of such language, see CES, “Report of the Committee on Economic Security,” 5, 25, 26.