With the passage of the Social Security Act in 1935, the advocates of social insurance claimed a decisive victory. The New Deal introduced comprehensive forms of social insurance against workplace accidents, unemployment, and aging and definitively removed one class of workers (standard, white, male workers) from the poor law system of family responsibility. Hoping to capitalize on this victory, federal administrators on the Social Security Board launched a vigorous assault on state poor laws over the following years and sought as far as possible to limit their use. Yet, many states resisted these intrusions and continued to enforce family responsibility in public assistance programs for the nonworking and noncontributing poor—including, most notably, Aid to Dependent Children or ADC (later renamed AFDC).

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 220