2002 marks the fifth anniversary of federal welfare reform in the US, and politicians and human rights advocates are debating the re-authorisation of new requirements for poor women and families receiving aid. This anthology analyses welfare in the context of broad political shifts, and posits more effective means for ending poverty.In the mid-1980s, the popularity of Charles Murray's anti-welfare treatise Losing Ground signaled the rising influence of the right-wing critique of welfare. In Lost Ground: Welfare Reform, Poverty and Beyond, a respected array of social scientists buck the conservative trend established by Murray and his cohorts, exposing welfare reform as a sham and positing new strategies to end poverty.Since 1996, when Bill Clinton pushed welfare reform legislation through Congress, the United States has drastically restructured its national policies regarding basic state supports for the poor. The evidence that welfare reform has created more problems than it has solved is mounting.The downside of welfare reform is documented in Lost Ground.This anthology analyses welfare issues in the context of broad political shifts, including globalization, the end of the family wage, the sexual revolution, and the rise of black liberation, feminism, and multiculturalism.