Frances Fox Piven | The Sun Magazine

Frances Fox Piven

Frances Fox Piven is coauthor of Regulating the Poor (Vintage). She teaches at the graduate school of the City University of New York.

— From September 1996
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

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Why Welfare Reform Is An Attack On All Women

What is being proposed under the title “welfare reform” is cuts in programs for the poorest and most vulnerable members of American society: nutritional programs and Medicaid programs and housing programs and programs for the aged, impoverished, and disabled. But the program that is most targeted for reform is Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), a program for poor mothers and their children. Men can get benefits, too, but the overwhelming majority of parents on AFDC are women, about five million of them, with about nine million children.

September 1996
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