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Self-Reliance Before the Welfare State: Evidence from the Charity Organization Movement in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2004

STEPHEN T. ZILIAK
STEPHEN T. ZILIAK
Affiliation:
Associate Professor, Roosevelt University, Faculty of Economics, School of Policy Studies, 430 S. Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60605. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

If replacing welfare with private charity has increased the self-reliance of the poor, the benefits would be observed in the charity organization movement of the late nineteenth century. Inebriation would subside, the heart would be cheered, earnings would rise, the “broken” would be “complete,” dependence would wither, and the classes would converge. If the benefits were large, they would have been large in Indianapolis—the beacon of charity in a Coasean landscape. The hypotheses are tested in hazard models using a sample from 25 years of household-level caseworker manuscripts. The evidence is not suggestive in the direction of hope.

Type
ARTICLES
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 64 , Issue 2 , June 2004 , pp. 433 - 461
Copyright
© 2004 The Economic History Association

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References

Manuscript Collections

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