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President Obama, poverty, and the scope and limits of social policy change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2020

Alex Waddan
Alex Waddan*
Affiliation:
School of History, Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK
*
CONTACT Alex Waddan [email protected] School of History, Politics and International Relations, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, UK
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Abstract

There has been a growing discussion in recent years about rising inequality in the U.S. Yet, this discourse, in focusing on the fortunes of the top 1%, distracted attention from the design of policy initiatives aimed at improving socio-economic conditions for the poor. This paper examines the development of anti-poverty politics and policy in the US during the Obama era. It analyses how effective the strategies and programmes adopted were and asks how they fit with models of policy change. The paper illustrates that the Obama administration did adopt an array of anti-poverty measures in the stimulus bill, but these built on existing programmes rather than create new ones and much of the effort was stymied by institutional obstacles. The expansion of the Medicaid program, which was part of the ACA, was also muted by institutional opposition, but it was a more path breaking reform than is often appreciated.

Keywords

United StatesObamapoverty policygreat recessionMedicaid expansion
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy , Volume 35 , Issue 1: SI: Recent Social Policy in Canada and the United States , February 2019 , pp. 96 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

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