“It Still Don't Make You Feel Like You're Doin' It”: Welfare Reform and Perceived Economic Self-Efficacy

ABSTRACT

The massive federal welfare reform effort of 1996 contained an inherent assumption that welfare use negatively affected recipients' sense of self-efficacy. Little research attention has been given to examining this assumption. Using in-depth interviews, I explore economic self-efficacy perceptions of 31 young mothers who have experience receiving welfare. Financial choice, they said, was central to their perceptions of themselves as economic agents and therefore to their sense of self-efficacy. Findings presented here detail women's perceptions of their own economic abilities, as well as how welfare receipt, the character of work, and experiences related to parenting in poverty all affected women's opportunities for exercising agency.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-efficacy
• welfare
• welfare reform
• poverty