In The Other Welfare: Supplemental Security Income and U.S. Social Policy, Edward D. Berkowitz and Larry DeWitt conceal their historiography-upending agenda behind a modest title and premise. The two writers—one an academic and one a public historian—tell the story of Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Rather than the biography of a policy program that it initially appears to be, though, the book shrewdly demonstrates how thinking about SSI challenges conventional narratives about conservative political ascendance and welfare reform.

Berkowitz and DeWitt tell the story of a Nixon-era attempt to simplify social-welfare programs by federalizing them. While most discussions of 1970s welfare reform emphasize the ill-fated Family Assistance Plan (FAP), the authors explain, they focus instead on a major reform that did go through at the time: SSI. Given the size and scope of SSI, it is remarkable that the narrative of the failed FAP remains so prominent in the welfare-state historiography. Even as a failed program, though, FAP has long seemed a better story, one populated with welfare rights activists and intriguing philosophical questions about what a state owes its citizens. Berkowitz and DeWitt set out to make us care as much about the creation of SSI, with its awkward beginnings, the diverse and unexpected populations who came to depend on its benefits, and ultimately, the expansion and staying power of the program.

Prior to SSI, programs aiding the elderly, the blind, and those with disabilities were made through block grants to the states. These were authorized by the Social Security Act of 1935 (for the elderly and blind) and through amendments made to the act in 1950 (for those with physical or mental disabilities that interfered with employment). The 1972 introduction of SSI was meant to simplify and improve this patchwork of state- and locally managed assistance. This was not a conservative reform, The Other Welfare argues, but actually a “sharp departure” and “major expansion of the welfare state” (pp. 8, 6).

This expansion ran into trouble quickly, however, as implementation did not go as planned. The program was launched under the auspices of the generally respected Social Security Administration, which should have given it an advantage from the start. Unfortunately, though, the reverse happened: SSI ended up stigmatizing the Social Security Administration. Clients found the transition from the local social-welfare programs they understood to this new national program confusing. Computer troubles led to the wrong checks reaching the wrong people. The Social Security Commissioner testified to Congress that SSI had “degraded the quality” of the Social Security Administration (p. 86). He was not alone in the assessment that the program's launch had hurt both SSI and the Social Security Administration.

The status of SSI went from bad to worse as the 1970s progressed. SSI's association with the Social Security Administration could not save it from a disastrous launch, nor from the stigma of its new, unexpected caseload. SSI bureaucrats imagined their rolls filled with elderly clients; instead, they ended up with a large and visible population of Americans with disabilities. Since the program launch coincided with the deinstitutionalization movement in mental health, many of those disabilities were mental and developmental. These heavily stigmatized disabilities, paradoxically, caused trouble for SSI in multiple ways: clients with addictions or hallucinations made other citizens uncomfortable, while clients with less-visible disabilities appeared as undeserving welfare cheats. The stigma only grew during the Reagan Era, when disability reviews meant to “crack down” on the supposedly underserving ultimately heightened awareness of the disability component of the program.

Unexpectedly, the growing distaste for the program did not doom it. In fact, it invigorated advocates and interest groups for those with disabilities. Over the course of the 1980s, the SSI rolls actually expanded, especially the child disability rolls, owing primarily to the courts. Then SSI participation was curbed in 1996, especially for undocumented immigrants. Still, the program managed to avoid the much grimmer fate of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).

The Other Welfare takes on the idea of the “two track” welfare plan, popularized in Linda Gordon's 1994 book Pitied but Not Entitled. The idea of the two-track plan is that social welfare in the United States developed with a destigmatized set of entitlements for those seen as deserving (usually earned benefits, like social security), and a stigmatized, highly conditional set of social-welfare benefits for the underserving (“unearned” benefits, like AFDC, for single mothers). While Gordon characterized SSI as an entitlement program, Berkowitz and DeWitt argue that the SSI program had more in common with AFDC. While their discussion of the policing of and stigma around disability suggests this may be true, the authors do not fully grapple with the implications. Decades of nuanced work on welfare-state history suggest the two-track model might not fully explain the uneven development of benefits; its real value, though, was in centering race and gender in social-welfare history. Given the limited attention paid to race and gender in The Other Welfare, it is unclear whether the reclassification of SSI's track is meant to change our understanding of the racial and gender politics of the U.S. welfare state, or if it is meant simply to fit SSI into the track narrative without upending it.

Ambiguities around classifying SSI are a sign of research directions opened by the text, rather than inherent problems. The authors are clear from the start that they were writing “an inside the Beltway” history (p. ix). Hopefully their original study will prompt further research into the history of disability and the welfare state, especially work engaged with the growing field of disability studies and work that centers on SSI clientele and activists. The Other Welfare, with its rich source base and engaging, clear writing style, will be a foundational book for anyone interested in welfare reform efforts from the 1970s through the 1990s, as well as anyone interested in disability and social policy.