The Segregated Origins of Social Security or The New Economics of Human Behaviour

The Segregated Origins of Social Security: African Americans and the Welfare State

Author: Mary Pool

The relationship between welfare and racial inequality has long been understood as a fight between liberal and conservative forces. In The Segregated Origins of Social Security, Mary Poole challenges that basic assumption. Meticulously reconstructing the behind-the-scenes politicking that gave birth to the 1935 Social Security Act, Poole demonstrates that segregation was built into the very foundation of the welfare state because white policy makers--both liberal and conservative--shared an interest in preserving white race privilege.

Although northern white liberals were theoretically sympathetic to the plight of African Americans, Poole says, their primary aim was to save the American economy by salvaging the pride of America's "essential" white male industrial workers. The liberal framers of the Social Security Act elevated the status of Unemployment Insurance and Social Security--and the white workers they were designed to serve--by differentiating them from welfare programs, which served black workers.

Revising the standard story of the racialized politics of Roosevelt's New Deal, Poole's arguments also reshape our understanding of the role of public policy in race relations in the twentieth century, laying bare the assumptions that must be challenged if we hope to put an end to racial inequality in the twenty-first.

Table of Contents:

1	So now Mr. President, we are looking for something : African Americans, the Social Security Act, and the Great Depression	12
2	The not-so-solid South : southern democrats in Congress	28
3	Colorblind public policy : the staff of the Committee on Economic Security	61
4	Shaky ground : black and interracial organizations	97
5	Gender and the white united front : the women of the Federal Children's Bureau	140
	Conclusion : those old discriminatory practices	174

Interesting textbook: El Guía del Empresario de Derecho comercial

The New Economics of Human Behaviour

Author: Mariano Tommasi

This volume views important social and political issues through the eyes of economists. Pioneered by Gary Becker, this approach asserts that all actions, whether working, playing, dating, or mating, have economic motivations and consequences, and can be analyzed using economic reasoning. Intended as an introduction to the current state of the field, the essays are informal and nontechnical, while still using up-to-date economic reasoning to illuminate such topics as crime, marriage, discrimination, immigration, fads and fashions.