Nancy Folbre on Women, Work and Welfare

Nancy Folbre, economics professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is a frequent contributor to Economix, a New York Times daily blog.  Two recent posts are noteworthy for their relevance to Caring Economics.

In the first, Folbre observes that income inequality along gender lines has persisted over the past 20 years despite gains for women in other areas of social and political life.  Additionally, class disparities among working women as a whole have intensified, with highly educated women enjoying improved access to employment benefits such as paid leave and flexible work arrangements, while women in low-skilled, low-income jobs have seen their benefits shrink:  Feminism's Uneven Success

The second provides an analysis of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. TANF was created to provide temporary relief during hard economic times.  Unlike other social programs such as food stamps, TANF has been unresponsive to the prolonged unemployment that has characterized the current recession.  Folbre argues that the past social welfare reforms of the mid-1990s are long overdue for new, basic reforms that would bring America's social policies closer to those adopted by the rest of the industrialized world:  Welfare Reform Revisited