American Social Welfare Policy―A Pluralist Approach

Provides a balanced and comprehensive overview of social welfare policy in the United States.

This text is part of the Connecting Core Competencies Series.

American Social Welfare Policy: A Pluralist Approach, Brief Edition examines social welfare policy in the United States, and includes cutting-edge issues such as information on the 2008 presidential election, the economy, the housing bust, the passage of Proposition 8 in California, and much more.

Teaching & Learning Experience

• Personalize Learning — MySearchLab delivers proven results in helping students succeed, provides engaging experiences that personalize learning, and comes from a trusted partner with educational expertise and a deep commitment to helping students and instructors achieve their goals.
• Improve Critical Thinking — Helps students sort out the major institutional actors within social welfare policy.
• Engage Students — Offers a user-friendly framework for policy analysis.
• Explore Current Issues — Information on Social Welfare Policy; the 2008 Election; Proposition 8; Economic issues.
• Apply CSWE Core Competencies — The text integrates the 2008 CSWE EPAS, with critical thinking questions and practice tests to assess student understanding and development of competency.
• Support Instructors — An Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank, Computerized Test Bank (MyTest), BlackBoard Test Item File, MySearchLab with Pearson eText, and PowerPoint presentations are included in the outstanding supplements package.

Note: MySearchLab does not come automatically packaged with this text. To purchase MySearchLab, please visit:

www.mysearchlab.com or you can purchase a valuepack of the text + MySearchLab (at no additional cost): ValuePack ISBN-10: 0205223540 / ValuePack ISBN-13: 9780205223541

Howard Karger is Professor and Head of the School of Social Work and Human Services, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. David Stoesz was Professor, Virginia Commonwealth University. Howard and David have been friends and colleagues for more than 25 years. In 2001 they collaborated on the creation of policyAmerica, a nonprofit organization dedicated to disseminating innovations in social policy. In addition to American Social Welfare Policy, they coauthored (with Lela Costin) The Politics of Child Abuse in America (Oxford University Press, 1996) and Reconstructing the American Welfare State (Rowman and Littlefield, 1992). Howard’s book, Shortchanged: Life and Debt in the Fringe Economy (Berret-Koehler, 2005) examines the financial practices and products that exploit millions of American families and won the 2006 Independent Publishers Award in Finance/Investment/Economics. David’s book, Quixote’s Ghost: The Right, the Liberati, and the Future of Social Policy (Oxford University Press, 2005), explains how conservatives have assumed control of domestic policy and proposes a new framework for social policy. It won the 2006 Pro Humanitate Literary Award. Howard lives in Brisbane, Australia; David and his son Julio live in Alexandria, Virginia.