Now that Clinton has ended welfare as we knew it, where do we go from here? The sixty-year old federal program to assist the needy is history. The attack was fueled by rhetoric about "dependency" and "social pathology." The question persists, however, Why does the richest country in the world have so many poor people and why is that number increasing?

Randy Albelda
Randy Albelda is a leading specialist on poverty and gender issues. She is professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and a regular contributor to Dollars and Sense magazine. She is the author of The War on the Poor.