Living on the Edge – The Realities of Welfare in America (Film and Culture) - Hardcover

Rank, Mark Robert

4.08

13 ratings by Goodreads

9780231084246: Living on the Edge – The Realities of Welfare in America (Film and Culture)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0231084242 ISBN 13: 9780231084246

Publisher: Columbia University Press, 1994

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This acclaimed book powerfully depicts a side of the welfare experience rarely seen, dispelling the myth that only an urban underclass-the center of most policy debate-struggles on welfare. Rank's juxtaposition of numbers and faces demonstrates that welfare recipients share much in common with the rest of the population.

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Review:

After ten years of intensive study of public welfare programs and welfare recipients, Mark Robert Rank has written a thoughtful book about poor people and their lives.... Rank argues that we have got it just about backward again. It turns out, he says, that a lot of assumptions about welfare are simply wrong.--Chicago Tribune

Rank analyzes the several ways of interpreting poverty and the need for welfare, and provides an account of his research on what poor people actually do to make ends meet and how they think about it.... Perhaps most poignant is that many of the people Rank spoke with work hard only to lose ground, yet maintain a strong belief in upward mobility and the American dream.--New York Times

From the Back Cover:

In this compelling look at the lives of welfare recipients, Mark Robert Rank shatters many of the myths commonly associated with the system and its participants. Living on the Edge considers three questions: Why do people turn to welfare? What is it like to survive on these programs? And what can we as a society do to address this critical issue? Based on ten years of research, the book follows individuals and families as they apply for and live on public aid and eventually leave the system. Rank's chronicle of their day-to-day experiences reveals the many sacrifices and crises that tax ordinary people in extraordinary ways. Beginning with a history of welfare from Roosevelt to Clinton, he focuses on AFDC and the Food Stamp program. He then describes the backgrounds of the recipients, their hopes for the future and attitudes toward welfare, their daily routines and problems, their work behavior, and the effect of welfare on family dynamics. Living on the Edge reveals the experiences of female-headed families, married couples, single men and women, and the elderly. Interviews, extensive data, and Rank's firsthand observations of the welfare system puncture the stereotypes of assumed laziness and apathy. By concentrating on a wide range of individuals and families, Rank depicts a side of the welfare experience rarely seen and dispels the myth that only the urban underclass - the center of most policy debate - struggles on welfare. Rank's juxtaposition of numbers and faces alerts us to the fact that welfare recipients have much in common with the rest of us. His frank analysis allows us to see beyond the common biases to the fundamental constraints and forces in our society that push somany people to life on the edge.

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