American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare

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American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare

4.04 of 5 stars 4.04 · rating details · 409 ratings · 77 reviews

In this definitive work, two-time Pulitzer finalist Jason DeParle cuts between the mean streets of Milwaukee and the corridors of Washington to produce a masterpiece of literary journalism. At the heart of the story are three cousins whose different lives follow similar trajectories. Leaving welfare, Angie puts her heart in her work. Jewell bets on an imprisoned man. Opal...more

Paperback, 422 pages

Published August 30th 2005 by Penguin Books (first published 2004)

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Jan 27, 2008 Jcigna rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book told the tale of Three Welfare Mothers right before welfare reform. What I learned from this book is to not extrapolate from their tales what it means to be on welfare and a mother. They are not characters, they are three individuals who don't represent anybody but themselves.

DeParle does a fantastic job at describing and humanizing three women who were demonized by congress and pundits; the archetypes which led to welfare's upheaval. But we must realize that they were not the normal...more

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Feb 12, 2009 Erin rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was a really interesting book about welfare..it gave a brief history of how the program started..it was originally meant as a transitional program for white widows with children to use temporarily until their husband's social security kicked in..eventually it was transferred to an entitlement program for minorities and became the worst drain on the American taxpayer possible. During the Clinton administration, Republicans forced him to create a path to work for welafre recipiants with time...more

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Sep 09, 2012 Amber rated it 3 of 5 stars

Oh man, was I conflicted about this book. It is intricately researched and reported, and I learned a ton about the trajectory of welfare reform, which I was too young to remember as it happened. And the author does a fantastic job following the lives of three women on welfare in Milwaukee, weaving their stories with changes in both national and state-level policy.

Despite how well constructed it is, though, the book ultimately disappointed me. In the scheme of Americans, I'm probably slightly lef...more Oh man, was I conflicted about this book. It is intricately researched and reported, and I learned a ton about the trajectory of welfare reform, which I was too young to remember as it happened. And the author does a fantastic job following the lives of three women on welfare in Milwaukee, weaving their stories with changes in both national and state-level policy.

Despite how well constructed it is, though, the book ultimately disappointed me. In the scheme of Americans, I'm probably slightly left of center, but as I read it, I felt like I must be the most conservative person to have read this book (alas, probably not true, the point is more about how it felt). The author has a real dismissiveness toward conservatives and Republicans, which is one thing, but as well toward their ideas and their motives, which really grates.

Worse, this bias ultimately drives the author's policy conclusions. He dismissively points out that welfare reform doesn't meaningfully improve outcomes for poor women, and cites this as an example of the policy's failings. But I have completely the opposite read--welfare reform saved the state however many billions of dollars, and didn't make things meaningfuly worse for poor women. That's less of a humanitarian success, but it's a huge policy improvement.

The author's sympathy for the women on welfare, and their backgrounds and current conditions, is obviously genuine and heartfelt. But he does not grapple with one of the central tensions highlighted in the book--what is the state's obligation to help--and how--indigent drug addicts?

I suppose ultimately what I was looking for was more a book that combined an evaluation of policy with stories that exemplify the changes. Whereas this book is one man's treatise--based on strongly held, prior beliefs, that aren't really re-evaluted--on how America has left poor people behind. Which, incidentally, I don't really disagree with. But the evidence for that case isn't really presented in this book, and too many of the author's viewpoints are taken as obviously true. But it is, nonetheless, an interesting read.(less)

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Aug 01, 2012 Ellen Pierson rated it 5 of 5 stars

Jason DeParle came to the Welfare beat with years of journalistic experience and a perspective that one would probably more or less expect from a New York Times reporter. The story he compiled after a decade of research – a decade during which his subjects persevered on and off the welfare rolls despite disappointments and setbacks – defies easy ideological classification. It says something when the Times and the National Review both praise your book. Mainly, it says that the challenges of entr...more Jason DeParle came to the Welfare beat with years of journalistic experience and a perspective that one would probably more or less expect from a New York Times reporter. The story he compiled after a decade of research – a decade during which his subjects persevered on and off the welfare rolls despite disappointments and setbacks – defies easy ideological classification. It says something when the Times and the National Review both praise your book. Mainly, it says that the challenges of entrenched poverty are the purview of neither Left nor Right. The tired narratives of both sides, with their reflexive talking points attributing causes and dispensing prescriptions, each have a little bit of truth to them and are totally inadequate at the same time.

DeParle weaves together the complicated truth that the Personal Responsibility Act – itself a bit of an irony in the neoliberal vein – both succeeded and failed. Poor women tumbled off the rolls and went to work. Turned out, they were less dependent on welfare money than people had supposed in the first place. Some women did report that work held intrinsic benefits. Unfortunately self-esteem doesn’t translate to economic wellbeing. The woman who most bought into the notion that “work sets you free” wound up with about $6,000 more a year and 3 kids who spent most of their time unsupervised and in varying degrees of trouble. The book does an excellent job of demonstrating the devastation wrought by the intersections between the systemic barriers of poverty and the self-destructive behaviors that often accompany it.

Maybe the biggest take-away is something that we are starting to realize more and more in the midst of a “jobless recovery.” People want to work. They want to support themselves and their families and they are willing to work extremely hard and endure a lot of hardships to do that. It’s a harsh market for low-skilled workers, though, and that problem is bad and getting worse. This book came out four years before what has come to be known as the financial crisis, but in a lot of places the financial crisis has been going on for decades.

In case you can’t tell, I had a hard time writing my review for this book, which is why I didn’t do it for a year. Looking back, a lot of what I have written is very much an abstraction of what the book is about. The main reason you should read this book, though, is that it does not do what I’ve just done. These are personal individual stories that are carefully connected to well-researched larger trajectories. Whatever your worldview, this book will remind you to be very careful before thinking that you know what should be done for/about the poor. And, yes, I know those prepositions both have a certain connotation. I might say more, but I think I’ve probably said enough. Anyway, as my students say, my brain hurts! But, seriously, read the book!
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Jul 11, 2010 Tim rated it 4 of 5 stars

This really was journalism at its best, weaving small scale personal stories into a broader narrative. I opposed the "W-2" welfare reform effort to eliminate welfare in Wisconsin, and I think this book justifies my opposition: the program was obviously corrupt from the start (I suspect "privatization" efforts often are) and the purpose of the program was not ending poverty, just ending welfare. Yet the book is pretty honest in also justifying the drive to end welfare as a (possibly) legitimate g...more

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Apr 26, 2012 Katie rated it 4 of 5 stars

A complex, in depth and even-handed look at the transition from AFDC to TANF nationally and locally. DeParle balances extensively researched statistics and interviews with policy wonks and politicians (as poverty correspondent for the NYT he is very well connected) with the story of 3 women and their families on welfare in Milwaukee. I found it particularly interesting because so much of the book involved WI and Milwaukee.

His conclusion is that TANF did push women off welfare and on to (mostly l...more

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Jan 09, 2011 Ocean rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

as someone who works in the welfare field, this book taught me a lot. i learned a lot about the controversial welfare reform going on in the 90's, largely blamed on bill clinton (although this book shows the actual process of that whole mess, & it's a lot more complicated than just clinton.) the author also profiles an extended family who was on welfare before the reforms & then was kicked off the rolls. this part is where the book shines. unlike many pieces i've read about welfare recip...more

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May 23, 2011 Michael Cremin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history

It took me two weeks to read this book, which is a bit unusual. I kept putting it down at first, not because it's bad, but because it was bothering me so much. American Dream is a book about public policy, but it's told in a narrative fashion. The author--the 'poverty reporter' for the New York Times, traces the lives of three young women living in Milwaukee during the 1990s during the end of the federal welfare program. I've previously read a very comprehensive policy book on anti-poverty progr...more It took me two weeks to read this book, which is a bit unusual. I kept putting it down at first, not because it's bad, but because it was bothering me so much. American Dream is a book about public policy, but it's told in a narrative fashion. The author--the 'poverty reporter' for the New York Times, traces the lives of three young women living in Milwaukee during the 1990s during the end of the federal welfare program. I've previously read a very comprehensive policy book on anti-poverty programs in America (America's Struggle Against Poverty in the 20th Century by James T. Patterson)so I was familiar with the history of these programs. What was so captivating about this book was the author's use of real people in telling the story of urban poverty in our country, and his ability to humanize the triumphs and tragedies of our welfare system.

The story follows the lives of three cousins, all female, all unmarried, all with children (ten kids all together; I lost track of how many different dads) who move from Chicago to Milwaukee, WI because the welfare benefits were more generous. The author traces their family back to a common ancestor, a slave in Mississippi. The next generations were sharecroppers who lived in circumstances not unlike slavery, until the parents of the young women migrate north, and have their own children, including the young women whose lives the author documents--Opal, Jewell, and Angie.

To say that the relationships between the young moms and their various family members, children, boyfriends, and the fathers of their kids are convoluted is an understatement. I could barely keep track of who was who. As the story of their lives unfolds, the author also tells the story of Washington's big Clinton-era program to end welfare (then called AFDIC) and change it into 'work-fare'(TANF). There were several points that struck me:

First, the author makes the generational gravity of poverty very apparent. In other words, those who are born black and poor have great difficulty moving out of poverty and into the working class. The sheer weight of their family problems, their oppressive neighborhoods, their health issues, and the complete lack of role models, is astonishing.

Second, the women the author follows make incredibly stupid choices. They are not unintelligent people by any means, but they just do remarkably dumb shit that makes their lives so much harder. Even when presented with opportunities for success, they can't seem to get off their asses long enough to grasp at them. And--let me put this as mildly as I can--their parenting skills leave a bit to be desired.

Finally, the TANF program itself is a joke. The federal government wasted tens of millions of dollars on the states by issuing block grants that were pissed away by unscrupulous private contractors who had every incentive to ignore the needs of their very vulnerable clients. Anyone who tells you we need to privatize Medicare should read this book; these people make Blackwater seem ethical.

This was a long, complex book that I kept walking away from because it both horrified and angered me in equal measure. No matter what the government did--write checks, force people to get jobs, hand out rent assistance, health care, food stamps, education, training--it made very little difference in the lives of these women and their children. As the author put it (paraphrase): before welfare reform, these people where poor, living in dangerous neighborhoods without adequate food or medical care. After welfare reform, these people were poor, living in dangerous neighborhoods without adequate food or medical care. It makes you want to bang your head against a wall.

In the fifty years since Johnson's Great Society programs and the War on Poverty began, we have spent trillions of dollars on programs of social uplift. The poverty rate today is just about the same as it was back in the 1960s. President Bush--and now President Obama--were on the right track with the Faith Based Initiative (started by Bush, greatly expanded by Obama). That, to me, is the way to take on poverty: help those who are motivated by their faith to make direct, personal contact with people who live in horrific poverty and personalize this whole thing. Yes, still help out with rent and food and medical care; that's essential...but don't leave it up to some government social worker to try and heal the damage caused by poverty. That does not work.

Maybe nothing will work. A remarkable, thought-provoking, and difficult book. Much to reflect on. (less)

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Jul 09, 2012 Charlotte Dunham rated it 5 of 5 stars

The author has written an interesting and informative book about welfare and welfare reform. The author brought the understanding of welfare reform to life by interweaving discussion of policy and politics with stories about the lives of three women in Milwaukee on welfare. The three women who the author followed were sympathetically yet realistically portrayed as complex human beings trying to do the best they can within the circumstances they live in.

This book has managed to reaffirm my belie...more

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Dec 18, 2008 Anjali rated it 4 of 5 stars

I picked this book off my reading list for Bryan Stevenson's Race, Poverty, & Criminal Justice class. I don't usually read non-fiction, but I may make future exceptions for books recommended by Bryan Stevenson.

Jason DeParle is a journalist who covered welfare for the NY Times. The book describes the political events surrounding the passage of the welfare bill in the 1990s and follows its effect on three Black women who were receiving welfare at the time. I found the political sections kind o...more

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Jul 02, 2010 Larry Bassett rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: social-action

I have been a welfare worker in 1969 and 2007. This book is true to life.

My assessment of the lying/cheating aspect of welfare based on my experience as a worker is this: Welfare is like gambling. You can give incorrect information or omit to give some required bit of information. If you are not "caught," you will get more money. Welfare is usually below subsistence level. If you are a mother and your children are suffering (whatever your definition is), you might elect to withhold or provide fa...more

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Apr 24, 2009 Kate rated it 4 of 5 stars

Very complete look at welfare reform, and the problems several women encountered in Milwaukee trying to leave welfare in the 1990s immediately after President Clinton and the Republicans overhauled AFDC.

Also goes into the history of the program, how it came to be overwhelmingly tangled in the issue of race, behind the scenes maneuvering in Washington within the Clinton Administration and between the right-wing Congress.

I'm making this sound like a sort of dry book but it's not at all; I read i...more

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Apr 28, 2009 Amanda rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, sociology-education

This is both a good study of the welfare-to-work program from a journalistic perspective, but also a window into just how hard it is to be a member of the truly working poor. The story centered on three (mostly) single moms trying to raise their families and survive after Clinton's push to "end welfare as we know it". I felt varying degrees of empathy and exasperation for the characters - on the one hand, you see how hard these women work just to hold things together and prioritize the things in...more

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May 25, 2009 Kirsti rated it 4 of 5 stars

"This is a reporter's endeavor: no names have been changed, characters melded, or quotes invented."

The reporter for the New York Times's poverty beat spent several years chronicling the lives of three women affected by the "end of welfare as we know it." Some of the policy-wonk stuff gets a little dull, but just about everything about the women and their families is fascinating, even the everyday stuff. I didn't know that nursing aides get injured at twice the rate of coal miners and earn less t...more

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Oct 19, 2011 Mark Sorial rated it 4 of 5 stars

When I was assigned to read a book and do a project on it, I randomly went to the library and blindly picked a book to do it on. Little did I know that this book would honestly have a huge impact on my perspective on struggles of life and the fact that we as humans overlook things that seem small to us but in reality a big deal to others. This book is about three individual women struggling to raise and support their kids as well as themselves in a time of complete distress in their lives. It is...more

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May 23, 2012 Chrisiant rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: brainspinach, non-fiction

Good comprehensive and accessible narrative non-fiction. Having been roughly 9 years old when the big Welfare Bill was passed in 1994, I don't have a clear sense of how it happened or the relevant political fights that were going on at the time. Several chapters outlined that process, in a clear and relatively colorful way (for a description of a legislative fight).

I found lots of striking information in the stories of the three women: their sense of themselves as strong, scrappy problem-solvers...more

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Apr 24, 2012 Rebecca Brooker rated it 4 of 5 stars

In all honesty, this is a disheartening but interesting look at welfare in the US from its inception through the Clinton administration's eager drive to put welfare mothers into jobs. Readers get a brief history of the purpose of the system, its entanglement with the post-slavery era, a vivid look at three mothers who survive - to some extent - the changes in welfare under Clinton, and an inarguable look at a broken system that will be difficult to change. DeParle's writing weaves facts with per...more

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Jan 03, 2010 Lobstergirl rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people interested in real life effects of social policy

Shelves: own, vacation-reads, government

This book - about the effects on three Milwaukee families of Clinton's drive to radically alter welfare in the 1990s by making women work - grew on me. I think perhaps it could be better organized; it flops around chronologically and topically, and the subject matter would be better served by something more linear. The book focuses on three women, but there are enough relatives, ancestors, husbands, boyfriends, lovers, and crack addict buddies that clarity and simplicity in the narrative become...more

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Dec 20, 2007 Abby rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people interested in welfare and social justice

Shelves: non-fiction

A detailed, if somewhat outdated, account of welfare and welfare reform/dissolution.

The author has been covering poverty in the U.S. for the New York Times for years (15?), and therefore has personalized and contextualized knowledge of the issues. This book alternates between the politics of welfare and the stories of 3 Midwestern women, which is a really nice method for humanizing the policies and explaining how these women are subject to economic forces beyond their control. The stories of the...more

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Jan 01, 2008 Peggy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: recently-read

A bit repetitive at times, but this book did a good job of showing me, a largely bleeding heart liberal, exactly HOW welfare reform failed. For one, the author makes a point that many welfare recipients were secretly working on the side anyway, because neither welfare alone nor a minimum wage job alone was enough for these families to make it. So for all the "success" claimed by the politicians in terms of the reform pushing folks off of welfare rolls and into jobs, the book makes the argument t...more

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Nov 29, 2011 Flora rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

I already knew Jason DeParle was a good writer, but this book still blew me away. He did a great job weaving several narratives -- those of the women, their mothers, the politicians -- into a fantastic explanation of how welfare reform took shape in the 1990s -- and some of its effects. I wish this had been available for us to read during our welfare class in college.

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Dec 30, 2008 Darcy rated it 5 of 5 stars

This was an amazing perspective on trying to understand poverty, and where it comes from. I didn't walk away with a definitive answer, but definately more of an understanding. I read this after reading Nickel and Dimed... they both gave me so much to think about.

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Apr 15, 2012 Elizabeth rated it 5 of 5 stars

Read this when it came out - excellent study illustrating the complexity of policy and skewed incentives around ending welfare, both when people are motivated to get off, and when less so.
Well written and compelling with both facts and stories.

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May 19, 2009 Gretta rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book was very educational. With the exception of all of the politics, I learned a great deal from the women and how they dealt with the welfare system. Some people cheat the welfare system just as some people cheat on their taxes.

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Apr 23, 2008 Michele :) rated it 5 of 5 stars

I absolutly loved this book. As a single mother in Wisconsin who has struggled to make ends meet for the last 9 years this book really spoke to me. DeParle follows four young women and their children for an extended period of time in Milwaukee, Wisconsin through "welfare reform". The book critically examines issues of job training, education, economic support, and other daily struggles poor mothers and thier children face. DeParle is close enough to the women he followed to be able to shed some...more

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Jan 28, 2012 Katherine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Katherine by: Megan McArdle

I didn't really expect to get into this at first, but it was very well-done and about as balanced as I think you can hope for on a politically charged topic, and both the depiction of the political maneuvering and the narrative of these three cousins really drew me in.

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Oct 23, 2007 Elyssa rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, sociology

This book should be listed among my all-time favorites. I learned more about the welfare system and its history from American Dream. In the beginning of the book, the author shows the complex relationship between slavery/race and today's welfare system. This was a major paradigm shift for me and reframed the way I view the welfare system.

The author goes on to beautifully weave the personal stories of three welfare recipients with the transformations of the welfare system, particularly the imple...more

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Mar 26, 2008 Katy rated it 3 of 5 stars

For the past ten years I have worked with a lot of kids and families on welfare and in poverty, without actually living that way myself. I keep searching for a new perspective on it - something that will click in my mind and give me a new direction for how I can help, educate, inspire, whatever it is that I should do to make a positive difference.

This book didn't really clear any of that up for me, but what it does do is look at the actions of some (i.e Clinton administration), which may have t...more

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Nov 23, 2008 Rebekah rated it 3 of 5 stars

Great book looking at the welfare system (especially the Clinton years) and history of poverty in America. I had to read it for a class, but it reads like a novel and is very educational.

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Feb 22, 2009 Alexandra rated it 4 of 5 stars

Read this book to get a better understanding of how social welfare policy is shaped and the effect of that policy on real people. I got a little lost in some of the chapters devoted to the political backdrop for the 1996 welfare-to-work revolution because I just couldn't keep all the players straight. However, the majority of the book is highly accessible, readable, and illuminating. The chapters on the three women whose lives the author uses to track the impact of this legislative overhaul are...more

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About Jason DeParle

Jason DeParle is a senior writer at The New York Times and a frequent contributor to The New York Times Magazine. A graduate of Duke University, DeParle won a George Polk Award in 1999 for his reporting on the welfare system and was a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Nancy-Ann, and their two sons.

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