Introduction -- The state of poverty : TANF recipients -- The response to poverty and inequality : the welfare state -- Demonizing the single-mother family : the path to welfare reform -- The welfare bureaucracy -- Work and the low-wage labor market : mothers and children -- Welfare reform and...

The political economy of the mainstreaming project -- Research methods -- Welfare in social and historical context -- The grand narrative as lived experience -- Bureaucracy at work in welfare-to-work -- The embeddedness of market rationality -- Conditions of employment -- Does low wage work pay?...