This best-selling text provides a comprehensive overview of social welfare policy in the United States while examining such cutting-edge issues as technology and social welfare policy and the relationship between tax policy and social welfare policy.

The new edition has been thoroughly updated to reflect the impact of dramatic changes in social welfare policy. The text examines how the major sectors of social welfare policy — the voluntary, governmental, corporate, and private sectors — operate and co-exist (the “pluralist approach”). It also offers a clear, user-friendly framework for policy analysis. The new edition includes coverage of the impact of welfare reform legislation.

The fourth edition has been reworked so that it is more accessible to students. The authors have trimmed down much of the narrative and used more bullets, charts, and graphs to make the material even easier to comprehend. A separate, updated supplement on social welfare policy and the Internet is available.