- Collection:
- Atlanta University and Clark Atlanta University Theses and Dissertations
- Title:
- The impact of the Reagan and Bush administrations on the Medicaid and women : infants and children's programs as each delivered health care to indigent North Carolinians, 1997
- Creator:
- Jenkins-Mullen, Dolly
- Date of Original:
- 1997-02-01
- Subject:
- Degrees, Academic
Dissertations, Academic - Location:
- United States, Georgia, Fulton County, Atlanta, 33.749, -84.38798
- Medium:
- theses
dissertations - Type:
- Text
- Format:
- application/pdf
- Description:
- The Reagan and Bush administrations promised drastic decreases in social welfare expenditures. This was to be accomplished by reducing federal funds, the backbone of social welfare funding, as well as loosening of federal restrictions or mandates where eligibility and services were concerned. This study uses descriptive analysis to explore the Medicaid and Women, Infant, and Children's (WIC) programs in North Carolina between 1980 and 1992 to assess the impact of health care delivery to the state's poor. Examining one state's response to punitive fiscal and ideological assaults on the poor allows insight into the politics of American federalism as it impacts poverty policy. Even though the WIC program includes the middle class, it, along with Medicaid were vulnerable to budgets cuts. In North Carolina, WIC was spared much of the attack suffered by the Medicaid program. While state Medicaid witnessed budgetary increases, explained largely by market driven raises in health care costs, program recipient levels declined. A brief exploration of the state's political culture aids in understanding how Medicaid, administered largely on the state and local level, sacrificed its poor, while WIC, whose base is clearly national, was left in tact. The role of race and gender in the effects of health care delivery is significant in North Carolina. Data reveals the uncertain state of well-being that African American women and children hold in the state. This population, in particular, is least able to withstand threats like those delivered between 1980 and 1992. Poverty programs are among the most vulnerable when federal and state forces join to reduce benefits to the poor. Future social welfare policies seem intent of continuing the social welfare spending trends of the Reagan and Bush administrations.
Degree type: dissertation
Degree name: Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Granting institution: Clark Atlanta University
Department: Department of Political Science
Advisor: Long, Richard A. - Metadata URL:
- http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12322/cau.td:1997_jenkins_mullen_dolly
- Holding Institution:
- Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library
- Rights:
-
