Fifty Worlds of Welfare: State Discretion and Social Citizenship Since 1994

The efficacy of social citizenship is determined by the generosity and the inclusiveness of assistance, and by the terms under which such assistance is offered. In the United States, social policies have historically been characterized by deference to private markets, categorical tiers of eligibility, and marked variation across local and state jurisdictions. In this article, we describe and characterize the reconfiguration of American social provision over a three-decade span (1994–2022). Using the State Safety Net Policy (SNNP) dataset, we employ comparable measures of the generosity of assistance and the inclusiveness of receipt across nine safety net programs for low-income families with children. These measures allow us to detail program trends, assess the extent of cross-state variation in provision, and tease out the implications of both for substantive social citizenship in the United States.