Doctoral Dissertation Research: Welfare Reform and Neighborhoods: Institutional and Individual Perspectives

University Of Southern California, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

For many inner-city neighborhoods, welfare payments play a fundamental role in the local economy and create a measure of stability in everyday life. In such so-called "welfare neighborhoods," local social service providers and service-dependent individuals engage in routine interactions. One facet of these institutional-individual relationships is the nature of the spatial settings within which such interactions occur. Settings like welfare offices, shelters, and sober-living homes are the primary locales where relationships between social welfare institutions and service consumers are forged. Initial cursory examinations indicate that major changes in national social policy, such as the welfare reforms of 1996, are fundamentally altering both the practices of local social welfare institutions and the survival adaptations of service-dependent people. This doctoral dissertation research project will focus on whether welfare reform has reconfigured the settings in which social welfare and other key neighborhood institutions interact with local service-dependent populations. Through the conduct of a case study in the University Park of central Los Angeles, this project will examine how welfare reform, institutional practices, and individual survival patterns work themselves out in particular spatial settings. A two-pronged research design (1) will document changes in the spatial settings of institutional welfare-service delivery under welfare reform, drawing heavily on the USC Welfare Reform Neighborhood Impact Study's large-scale longitudinal survey of 40 local institutions and (2) will use retrospective and bimonthly longitudinal surveys to chart changes in the survival patterns of local service-dependent residents as they negotiate the spatial settings of welfare and other neighborhood services. While focusing on one particular welfare neighborhood, the project results will shed light on processes operating in other welfare neighborhoods in large cities. The project will shed light on the spatial setting of service delivery, a dimension largely missing from previous geographical accounts of the welfare state, and it will explicate ways in which welfare reform is contingent upon the neighborhood context. The project's examination of the concept and reality of "welfare neighborhood" will complement urban geographical studies at the city, county and state levels, and the proposed analysis will enrich state-centered studies of social welfare, adding emphasis regarding the role of local institutions and neighborhoods as factors that shape the implementation and the ultimate success of welfare reform. Project results also will provide valuable answers to questions asked by those providing services to dependent individuals. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.