An Incremental and Rational Analysis of the Development of U.S. Welfare Policy and Expenditures, 1929-1979 (United States).

Abstract

This dissertation has two principal objectives. On the basis of two patterns of policy analysis, incremental and rational, the first objective is to provide a comprehensive, systematic and parsimonious theoretical framework in order to shed light on changes in and goals of U.S. welfare policy, and the growth of welfare expenditures from the 1930's to the present. Three definitions of welfare are used: public assistance, income maintenance and general social welfare. The incremental thesis in the gradual sense is discarded because of: (1) its reliance on the individual's subjective frame of reference, (2) the initial "big bang" of the 1935 Social Security Act, and (3) the dynamic growth rate of welfare expenditures. Instead, the incremental thesis in the partial and additive sense is supported by (1) the steadily increasing trend of welfare expenditures and priorities, and (2) the general liberalization of welfare legislation. Rational analysis is introduced to strengthen the theoretical weaknesses of incremental analysis, and four steps are taken: (1) to conceive of a comprehensive solution such as Negative Income Tax, (2) to adopt a goal approach, (3) to construct a theoretical model of welfare expenditures by including explanatory variables, and to synthesize the theoretical model with the incremental model, and (4) to conceptualize a causal linkage between incremental policy-making and goals of welfare policy. The adoption of the goal approach enables us to realize the mutually exclusive relationship among welfare goals, and to theorize multiple maximization rules instead of one single maximization rule. Institutionalization is the key condition under which incremental policy-making has come to prevail in the United States. The second objective is to build statistical models of the time-series of U.S. welfare expenditures, 1929 through the present, in terms of three variables: economic level, partisan politics and defense priority. A key hypothesis is set up to determine whether party control of the presidency, the House and the Senate makes any difference vis-a-vis demographic variables. Among our conclusions: (1) welfare expenditures are an inappropriate dependent variable to assess the importance of political variables relative to demographic variables, and the variable of welfare priority is proposed instead; and (2) partisan strength in the House is more important in accounting for welfare expenditures and priority than that in the presidency and the Senate.