Throughout the history of the United States, impacts of colonialization, patriarchy, and white supremacy have influenced our public policies. Exclusionary laws aiming to bar people of certain races or genders from living full lives provide us with the most obvious example. However, we can find many examples of laws written with the stated purpose of supporting the public that enable access to benefits only if you live life in a specific way deemed appropriate by policymakers.

In 1996, Congress and President Bill Clinton passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), which made significant changes to our nation’s public benefits system. The legislation came on the heels of the “welfare queen” narrative promoted in the 1980s, intended to fuel resentment toward people living in poverty by falsely painting them as “lazy” and “fraudulent.” PRWORA adopted this narrative by implementing new requirements to access public benefits that ultimately deem whether recipients are “deserving” based on behaviors, immigration status, and work status.

The Public Benefits Justice Team at CLASP, with support from a few of our colleagues and partners, has created a blog series to explore the ways that behavioral control within policies have shaped public benefits. We hope that the series provokes some thought and ideas of how we can work together to reenvision public benefits to truly ensure everyone can thrive.