Voices of Welfare Reform: Bureaucratic Rationality Versus the Perceptions of Welfare Participants

This article compares the assumptions of welfare reform with the way the program is actually implemented to show the underlying contradictions in the way policy is politically justified and implemented. The results of focus group discussions with women on welfare in four rural Appalachian Ohio counties demonstrate the disparities between the top-down goals of welfare policy and the bottom-up perceptions of their outcomes.