Trapped in America s Safety Net

by Andrea Louise Campbell

When Andrea Louise Campbell’s sister-in-law, Marcella Wagner, was run off the freeway by a hit-and-run driver, she was seven-and-a-half months pregnant.

Trapped in America s Safety Net

Author: Andrea Louise Campbell

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

ISBN: 022614058X

Page: 200

View: 152

When Andrea Louise Campbell’s sister-in-law, Marcella Wagner, was run off the freeway by a hit-and-run driver, she was seven-and-a-half months pregnant. She survived—and, miraculously, the baby was born healthy. But that’s where the good news ends. Marcella was left paralyzed from the chest down. This accident was much more than just a physical and emotional tragedy. Like so many Americans—50 million, or one-sixth of the country’s population—neither Marcella nor her husband, Dave, who works for a small business, had health insurance. On the day of the accident, she was on her way to class for the nursing program through which she hoped to secure one of the few remaining jobs in the area with the promise of employer-provided insurance. Instead, the accident plunged the young family into the tangled web of means-tested social assistance. As a social policy scholar, Campbell thought she knew a lot about means-tested assistance programs. What she quickly learned was that missing from most government manuals and scholarly analyses was an understanding of how these programs actually affect the lives of the people who depend on them. Using Marcella and Dave’s situation as a case in point, she reveals their many shortcomings in Trapped in America’s Safety Net. Because American safety net programs are designed for the poor, Marcella and Dave first had to spend down their assets and drop their income to near-poverty level before qualifying for help. What’s more, to remain eligible, they will have to stay under these strictures for the rest of their lives, meaning they are barred from doing many of the things middle-class families are encouraged to do: Save for retirement. Develop an emergency fund. Take advantage of tax-free college savings. And, while Marcella and Dave’s story is tragic, the financial precariousness they endured even before the accident is all too common in America, where the prevalence of low-income work and unequal access to education have generated vast—and growing—economic inequality. The implementation of Obamacare has cut the number of uninsured and underinsured and reduced some of the disparities in coverage, but it continues to leave too many people open to tremendous risk. Behind the statistics and beyond the ideological battles are human beings whose lives are stunted by policies that purport to help them. In showing how and why this happens, Trapped in America’s Safety Net offers a way to change it.

We the People

by Benjamin Ginsberg

Politics is relevant and participation matters--now more than ever

We the People

Author: Benjamin Ginsberg

Publisher: W. W. Norton

ISBN: 9780393679571

Page:

View: 195

With fresh insight from new co-author Andrea Campbell, We the People, Twelfth Edition, once again sets the standard for showing students how government impacts their lives and why it matters who participates. Campbell relates true, personal stories of how government affects ordinary citizens. This focus is reinforced by the book's signature "Who Are Americans?" and "Who Participates?" features which motivate critical thinking about how Americans experience and shape politics. Learning goals ensure that students maintain consistent focus on core concepts in the text, in its companion InQuizitive learning tool, and in supporting critical-thinking exercises.

Gendered Citizenship

by Natasha Behl

Trapped in America's Safety Net: One Family's Struggle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Campbell, Andrea Louise. 2015. “Family Story as Political ...

Gendered Citizenship

Author: Natasha Behl

Publisher: Oxford University Press

ISBN: 0190949449

Page: 224

View: 643

It has been shown time and again that even though all citizens may be accorded equal standing in the constitution of a liberal democracy, such a legal provision hardly guarantees state protections against discrimination and political exclusion. More specifically, why do we find pervasive gender-based discrimination, exclusion, and violence in India when the Indian Constitution supports an inclusive democracy committed to gender and caste equality? In Gendered Citizenship, Natasha Behl offers an examination of Indian citizenship that weaves together an analysis of sexual violence law with an in-depth ethnography of the Sikh community to explore the contradictory nature of Indian democracy--which gravely affects its institutions and puts its citizens at risk. Through a situated analysis of citizenship, Behl upends longstanding academic assumptions about democracy, citizenship, religion, and gender. This analysis reveals that religious spaces and practices can be sites for renegotiating democratic participation, but also uncovers how some women engage in religious community in unexpected ways to link gender equality and religious freedom as shared goals. Gendered Citizenship is a groundbreaking inquiry that explains why the promise of democratic equality remains unrealized, and identifies potential spaces and practices that can create more egalitarian relations.

Digesting the Public Sphere

by Sarah Marusek

Trapped in America's safety net: One family's struggle. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Campbell, A. (2015). Family story as political science: ...

Digesting the Public Sphere

Author: Sarah Marusek

Publisher: Routledge

ISBN: 1351264508

Page: 126

View: 405

In the routine spectrum of our lives, we inhabit the public sphere. Whether in the street, the shopping center, or on the bus, we engage with the empowered, the disempowered, the omitted, and the powerful. Within the public sphere, the notion of public involves a complexity of approaches to aspects of everyday practices of power, performance, and place. Through these approaches, that which is public can be visualized, experienced, and contested in the construction, ceremony, and design of buildings, institutions, and daily activities. In a variety of ways, the conceptualization and contextualization of the public contributes to identity formations, narratives of community, and manifestations of the political that materially and discursively transpire within the public sphere in the perceptions of inequality, metaphors for knowledge, and critiques of consciousness. For this volume focused on interpretive methods and methodologies that address the concept of public, we present a lively engagement with methodological insight into the political digestion of the public sphere. We delve into models of and approaches to conducting research, the analysis of findings, and the reaffirmation of enhanced techniques of related inquiry in public spaces. We seek to explore the following questions: What is the public? How do we visualize/understand/experience the public? What are the ways in which these insights connect to articulations of citizenship and democracy? How is the public implicated in the political? The chapters originally published as a special issue in Space and Polity.

Class Attitudes in America

by Spencer Piston

“Regulating Today's Poor: Reflections on Andrea Campbell's Trapped in America's Safety Net.” Perspectives on Politics 13: 1113–1116. Poole, Keith. 2012.

Class Attitudes in America

Author: Spencer Piston

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

ISBN: 1108668275

Page:

View: 842

This book explains a long-standing puzzle in American politics: why so many Americans support downwardly redistributive social welfare programs, when such support seems to fly in the face of standard conceptions of the American public as anti-government, individualistic, and racially prejudiced. Bringing class attitudes into the analysis, Spencer Piston demonstrates through rigorous empirical analysis that sympathy for the poor and resentment of the rich explain American support for downwardly redistributive programs - not only those that benefit the middle class, but also those that explicitly target the poor. The book captures an important and neglected component of citizen attitudes toward a host of major public policies and candidate evaluations. It also explains why government does so little to combat economic inequality; in key instances, political elites downplay class considerations, deactivating sympathy for the poor and resentment of the rich.

Who Gets What

by Frances McCall Rosenbluth

Trapped in America's safety net: One family's struggle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chauvel, L. (2016). The intensity and shape of inequality.

Who Gets What

Author: Frances McCall Rosenbluth

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

ISBN: 1108840205

Page: 320

View: 171

The authors of this timely book, Who Gets What?, harness the expertise from across the social sciences to show how skyrocketing inequality and social dislocation are fracturing the stable political identities and alliances of the postwar era across advanced democracies. Drawing on extensive evidence from the United States and Europe, with a focus especially on the United States, the authors examine how economics and politics are closely entwined. Chapters demonstrate how the new divisions that separate people and places-and fragment political parties-hinder a fairer distribution of resources and opportunities. They show how employment, education, sex and gender, and race and ethnicity affect the way people experience and interpret inequality and economic anxieties. Populist politics have addressed these emerging insecurities by deepening social and political divisions, rather than promoting broad and inclusive policies.

Political Sociology and the People s Health

by Jason Beckfield

Trapped in America's Safety Net: One Family's Struggle. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Retrieved from https://books.

Political Sociology and the People s Health

Author: Jason Beckfield

Publisher: Oxford University Press

ISBN: 0190492481

Page: 176

View: 618

A social epidemiologist looks at health inequalities in terms of the upstream factors that produced them. A political sociologist sees these same inequalities as products of institutions that unequally allocate power and social goods. Neither is wrong -- but can the two talk to one another? In a stirring new synthesis, Political Sociology and the People's Health advances the debate over social inequalities in health by offering a new set of provocative hypotheses around how health is distributed in and across populations. It joins political sociology's macroscopic insights into social policy, labor markets, and the racialized and gendered state with social epidemiology's conceptualizations and measurements of populations, etiologic periods, and distributions. The result is a major leap forward in how we understand the relationships between institutions and inequalities -- and essential reading for those in public health, sociology, and beyond.

Universal Health Care

by Marcia Amidon Lusted

Andrea Louise Campbell, Trapped in America's Safety Net: One Family's Struggle. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014.

Universal Health Care

Author: Marcia Amidon Lusted

Publisher: Greenhaven Publishing LLC

ISBN: 1534506276

Page: 128

View: 366

Under universal health care, all residents of a country would be guaranteed care without incurring financial hardship, regardless of income. Out of the thirty-three countries that are considered developed, thirty-two have universal health care, with the United States being the exception. However, despite the widespread nature of universal health care, its implementation varies between countries. Additionally, despite its positive health impacts, the financial burden it places on governments is a major source of concern. This volume helps readers examine this issue through exploring economic, political, and health considerations, taking all sides of the debate into account.

The Government Citizen Disconnect

by Suzanne Mettler

Trapped in America's Safety Net: One Family's Struggle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cancian, Maria, and Sheldon Danziger, eds. 2009.

The Government Citizen Disconnect

Author: Suzanne Mettler

Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation

ISBN: 1610448723

Page: 259

View: 410

Americans’ relationship to the federal government is paradoxical. Polls show that public opinion regarding the government has plummeted to all-time lows, with only one in five saying they trust the government or believe that it operates in their interest. Yet, at the same time, more Americans than ever benefit from some form of government social provision. Political scientist Suzanne Mettler calls this growing gulf between people’s perceptions of government and the actual role it plays in their lives the "government-citizen disconnect." In The Government-Citizen Disconnect, she explores the rise of this phenomenon and its implications for policymaking and politics. Drawing from original survey data which probed Americans’ experiences of 21 federal social policies -- such as food stamps, Social Security, Medicaid, and the home mortgage interest deduction -- Mettler shows that 96 percent of adults have received benefits from at least one of them, and that the average person has utilized five. Overall usage rates transcend social, economic, and political divisions, and most Americans report positive experiences of their policy experiences. However, the fact that they have benefited from these policies has little positive effect on people’s attitudes toward government. Mettler finds that shared identities and group affiliations, as well as ideological forces, are more powerful and consistent influences. In particular, those who oppose welfare tend to extrapolate their unfavorable views of it to government in general. Deep antipathy toward the government has emerged as the result of a conservative movement that has waged a war on social welfare policies for over forty years, even as economic inequality and benefit use have increased. Mettler finds that voting patterns exacerbate the government-citizen disconnect, as those holding positive views of federal programs and supporting expanded benefits have lower rates of political participation than those holding more hostile views of the government. As a result, the loudest political voice belongs to those who have benefited from policies but who give government little credit for their economic well-being, seeing their success more as a matter of their own deservingness. This contributes to the election of politicians who advocate cutting federal social programs. According to Mettler, the government-citizen disconnect frays the bonds of representative government and democracy. The Government-Citizen Disconnect illuminates a paradox that increasingly shapes American politics. Mettler's examination of hostility toward government at a time when most Americans will at some point rely on the social benefits it provides helps us better understand the roots of today's fractious political climate.

Fragmented Democracy

by Jamila Michener

... Keith A Wailoo and Julian E. Zelizer, 213–229. New York: Oxford University Press. 2014. Trapped in America's Safety Net: One Family's Struggle.

Fragmented Democracy

Author: Jamila Michener

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

ISBN: 1316510190

Page:

View: 250

Because of federalism, Medicaid takes very different forms in different places. This has dramatic and crucial consequences for democratic citizenship.

Social Democratic Capitalism

by Lane Kenworthy

Trapped in America's Safety Net. University of Chicago Press. Campbell, John L., John A. Hall, and Ove K. Pedersen, eds. 2006. National Identity and the ...

Social Democratic Capitalism

Author: Lane Kenworthy

Publisher: Oxford University Press

ISBN: 0190064129

Page: 224

View: 342

What configuration of institutions and policies is most conducive to human flourishing? The historical and comparative evidence suggests that the answer is social democratic capitalism - a democratic political system, a capitalist economy, good elementary and secondary schooling, a big welfare state, pro-employment public services, and moderate regulation of product and labor markets. In Social Democratic Capitalism, Lane Kenworthy shows that this system improves living standards for the least well-off, enhances economic security, and boosts equality of opportunity. And it does so without sacrificing other things we want in a good society, from liberty to economic growth to health and happiness. Its chief practitioners have been the Nordic nations. The Nordics have gone farther than other rich democratic countries in coupling a big welfare state with public services that promote high employment and modest product- and labor-market regulations. Many believe this system isn't transferable beyond Scandinavia, but Kenworthy shows that social democratic capitalism and its successes can be replicated in other affluent nations, including the United States. Today, the U.S. lags behind other countries in economic security, opportunity, and shared prosperity. If the U.S. were to expand its existing social programs and add some additional ones, many ordinary Americans would have better lives. Kenworthy argues that, despite formidable political obstacles, the U.S. is likely to move toward social democratic capitalism in coming decades. As a country gets richer, he explains, it becomes more willing to spend more in order to safeguard against risk and enhance fairness. With social democratic capitalism as his blueprint, he lays out a detailed policy agenda that could alleviate many of America's problems.

Who Wants to Run

by Andrew B. Hall

lawrence r. jacobs, and adam j. berinsky Series titles, continued from front matter: trapped in america's safety net: one family's struggle by Andrea Louise ...

Who Wants to Run

Author: Andrew B. Hall

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

ISBN: 022660960X

Page: 176

View: 133

The growing ideological gulf between Democrats and Republicans is one of the biggest issues in American politics today. Our legislatures, composed of members from two sharply disagreeing parties, are struggling to function as the founders intended them to. If we want to reduce the ideological gulf in our legislatures, we must first understand what has caused it to widen so much over the past forty years. Andrew B. Hall argues that we have missed one of the most important reasons for this ideological gulf: the increasing reluctance of moderate citizens to run for office. While political scientists, journalists, and pundits have largely focused on voters, worried that they may be too partisan, too uninformed to vote for moderate candidates, or simply too extreme in their own political views, Hall argues that our political system discourages moderate candidates from seeking office in the first place. Running for office has rarely been harder than it is in America today, and the costs dissuade moderates more than extremists. Candidates have to wage ceaseless campaigns, dialing for dollars for most of their waking hours while enduring relentless news and social media coverage. When moderate candidates are unwilling to run, voters do not even have the opportunity to send them to office. To understand what is wrong with our legislatures, then, we need to ask ourselves the question: who wants to run? If we want more moderate legislators, we need to make them a better job offer.

Handbook of Welfare in China

by B. Carrillo

Campbell, A. L. (2014), Trapped in America's Safety Net, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chan, C. K. (2010), 'Re-thinking the incrementalist thesis in ...

Handbook of Welfare in China

Author: B. Carrillo

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN: 178347274X

Page: 464

View: 877

The Handbook is a timely compilation dedicated to exploring a rare diversity of perspectives and content on the development, successes, reforms and challenges within China’s contemporary welfare system. It showcases an extensive introduction and 20 original chapters by leading and emerging area specialists who explore a century of welfare provision from the Nationalist era, up to and concentrating on economic reform and marketisation (1978 to the present). Organised around five key concerns (social security and welfare; emerging issues and actors; gaps; future challenges) chapters draw on original case-based research from diverse disciplines and perspectives, engage existing literature and further key debates.

The Fiscalization of Social Policy

by Joshua T. McCabe

Trapped in America's Safety Net: One Family's Struggle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Campbell, Andrea L., and Kimberly J. Morgan. (2005).

The Fiscalization of Social Policy

Author: Joshua T. McCabe

Publisher: Oxford University Press

ISBN: 019084132X

Page: 288

View: 398

In 1970, a single mother with two children working full-time at the federal minimum wage in the US received no direct cash benefits from the federal government. Today, after a period of austerity, that same mother would receive $7,572 in federal cash benefits. This money does not come from social assistance, family allowances, or other programs we traditionally see as part of the welfare state. Instead, she benefits from the earned income tax credit (EITC) and the child tax credit (CTC)-tax credits for low-income families that have become a major component of American social policy. In The Fiscalization of Social Policy, Joshua McCabe challenges conventional wisdom on American exceptionalism, offering the first and only comparative analysis of the politics of tax credits. Drawing comparisons between similar developments in the UK and Canada, McCabe upends much of what we know about tax credits for low-income families. Rather than attributing these changes to anti-welfare attitudes, mobilization of conservative forces, shifts toward workfare, or racial antagonism, he argues that the growing use of tax credits for social policy was a strategic adaptation to austerity. While all three countries employ the same set of tax credits, child US poverty rates remain highest, as their tax credits paradoxically exclude the poorest families. A critical examination of social policy over the last fifty years, The Fiscalization of Social Policy shows why the US government hasn't tackled poverty, even while it implements greater tax benefits for the poor.

Specters of Belonging

by Adrián Félix

“Family Story as Political Science: Reflections on Writing Trapped in America's Safety Net.” Perspectives on Politics 13 (4): 1043– 1052. Carbado, Devon.

Specters of Belonging

Author: Adrián Félix

Publisher: Oxford University Press

ISBN: 0190879394

Page: 240

View: 789

As the United States hardens its border with Mexico, how do migrants make transnational claims of citizenship in both nation-states? By enacting citizenship in both countries, Mexican migrants are challenging the meaning of membership and belonging from the margins of both citizenship regimes. With their incessant border-shattering political practices, Mexican migrants have become the embodiment of transnational citizenship on both sides of the divide. Drawing on his experiences leading citizenship classes for Mexican migrants and working with cross-border activists, Adrián Félix examines the political lives (and deaths) of Mexican migrants in Specters of Belonging. Tracing transnationalism across the different stages of the migrant political life cycle - beginning with the so-called political baptism of naturalization and ending with the practice by which migrant bodies are repatriated to Mexico for burial after death - Félix reveals the varied ways in which Mexican transnational subjects practice citizenship in the United States as well as Mexico. As such, Félix unearths how Mexican migrants' specters of belonging perennially haunt the political projects of nationalism, citizenship, and democracy on both sides of the border.

Legacies of Losing in American Politics

by Jeffrey K. Tulis

... continued from front matter: Trapped in America's Safety Net: One Family's Struggle by Andrea Louise Campbell Arresting Citizenship: The Democratic ...

Legacies of Losing in American Politics

Author: Jeffrey K. Tulis

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

ISBN: 022651546X

Page: 224

View: 522

American politics is typically a story about winners. The fading away of defeated politicians and political movements is a feature of American politics that ensures political stability and a peaceful transition of power. But American history has also been built on defeated candidates, failed presidents, and social movements that at pivotal moments did not dissipate as expected but instead persisted and eventually achieved success for the loser’s ideas and preferred policies. With Legacies of Losing in American Politics, Jeffrey K. Tulis and Nicole Mellow rethink three pivotal moments in American political history: the founding, when anti-Federalists failed to stop the ratification of the Constitution; the aftermath of the Civil War, when President Andrew Johnson’s plan for restoring the South to the Union was defeated; and the 1964 presidential campaign, when Barry Goldwater’s challenge to the New Deal order was soundly defeated by Lyndon B. Johnson. In each of these cases, the very mechanisms that caused the initial failures facilitated their eventual success. After the dust of the immediate political defeat settled, these seemingly discredited ideas and programs disrupted political convention by prevailing, often subverting, and occasionally enhancing constitutional fidelity. Tulis and Mellow present a nuanced story of winning and losing and offer a new understanding of American political development as the interweaving of opposing ideas.

Who Governs

by James N. Druckman

lawrence r. jacobs, and adam j. berinsky Also in the series: trapped in america's safety net: one family's struggle by Andrea Louise Campbell arresting ...

Who Governs

Author: James N. Druckman

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

ISBN: 022623455X

Page: 192

View: 481

America’s model of representational government rests on the premise that elected officials respond to the opinions of citizens. This is a myth, however, not a reality, according to James N. Druckman and Lawrence R. Jacobs. In Who Governs?, Druckman and Jacobs combine existing research with novel data from US presidential archives to show that presidents make policy by largely ignoring the views of most citizens in favor of affluent and well-connected political insiders. Presidents treat the public as pliable, priming it to focus on personality traits and often ignoring it on policies that fail to become salient. Melding big debates about democratic theory with existing research on American politics and innovative use of the archives of three modern presidents—Johnson, Nixon, and Reagan—Druckman and Jacobs deploy lively and insightful analysis to show that the conventional model of representative democracy bears little resemblance to the actual practice of American politics. The authors conclude by arguing that polyarchy and the promotion of accelerated citizen mobilization and elite competition can improve democratic responsiveness. An incisive study of American politics and the flaws of representative government, this book will be warmly welcomed by readers interested in US politics, public opinion, democratic theory, and the fecklessness of American leadership and decision-making.

Why Washington Won t Work

by Marc J. Hetherington

... and manipulation by James N. Druckman and Lawrence R. Jacobs trapped in america's safety net: one family's struggle by Andrea Louise Campbell arresting ...

Why Washington Won t Work

Author: Marc J. Hetherington

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

ISBN: 022629935X

Page: 256

View: 986

Polarization is at an all-time high in the United States. But contrary to popular belief, Americans are polarized not so much in their policy preferences as in their feelings toward their political opponents: To an unprecedented degree, Republicans and Democrats simply do not like one another. No surprise that these deeply held negative feelings are central to the recent (also unprecedented) plunge in congressional productivity. The past three Congresses have gotten less done than any since scholars began measuring congressional productivity. In Why Washington Won’t Work, Marc J. Hetherington and Thomas J. Rudolph argue that a contemporary crisis of trust—people whose party is out of power have almost no trust in a government run by the other side—has deadlocked Congress. On most issues, party leaders can convince their own party to support their positions. In order to pass legislation, however, they must also create consensus by persuading some portion of the opposing party to trust in their vision for the future. Without trust, consensus fails to develop and compromise does not occur. Up until recently, such trust could still usually be found among the opposition, but not anymore. Political trust, the authors show, is far from a stable characteristic. It’s actually highly variable and contingent on a variety of factors, including whether one’s party is in control, which part of the government one is dealing with, and which policies or events are most salient at the moment. Political trust increases, for example, when the public is concerned with foreign policy—as in times of war—and it decreases in periods of weak economic performance. Hetherington and Rudolph do offer some suggestions about steps politicians and the public might take to increase political trust. Ultimately, however, they conclude that it is unlikely levels of political trust will significantly increase unless foreign concerns come to dominate and the economy is consistently strong.