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Social Amelioration through Mass Insurgency? A Reexamination of the Piven and Cloward Thesis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Robert B. Albritton
Robert B. Albritton*
Affiliation:
Virginia Polytechnic Institute andState University
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Abstract

Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward (1971, 1977) have argued that mass insurgency in the United States, occurring especially between 1964 and 1969, produced a series of responses by government, one of the most significant being massive expansion of welfare rolls. Using data on which they base their claim, this study examines the hypothesis that there is a positive association between social disorders and welfare caseload increases. The conclusion is that associations specified by Piven and Cloward are not supported by the data and a plausible rival hypothesis is offered to explain the massive increases in welfare caseloads.

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Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 73 , Issue 4 , December 1979 , pp. 1003 - 1011
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1979

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