The persistence of poverty amid economic growth has provoked debate about the state’s responsibility for social welfare since the beginnings of industrialization. Claiming that empirical study was a sine qua non for effective reform, social investigators played a leading role in formulating policies toward the poor. Later, academic social scientists developed theoretical models, statistical data, and a language for defining social problems that were placed in the service of the state and of social and political movements. For better or worse, the ideas of modern social scientists have helped to write the history of twentieth century social welfare policy and affected the life fortunes of millions of people.

SYSTEMATIZING SOCIAL INQUIRY

The relationship between social inquiry and social welfare policy is as old as efforts to redress human misery. In both Europe and America, notions of the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor surfaced in some of the earliest measures devised to lessen the scourge of indigence, such as the Elizabethan poor laws and early American strategies for “bidding out” and “warning out” the poor. Data collection, analysis, and the regulation of those who received assistance were mandated by the logic of policies that distinguished between those who truly needed help and malingerers, and by a desire always to minimize the burden of dependency on the state.