As part of Child Watch, a national monitoring project set up in 1982 to determine the effects of Federal funding cuts and changes in health and social programs on children from low-income families, three programs in New York City were chosen for study. The three programs, which provided health services for low-income children and their mothers,…

This report, along with its supplemental volumes, assesses the welfare system and its successes and failures, describes the frustrations felt by the poor in the United States, and proposes a basic change in public assistance policy. America's state and federal governments spend more than $150 billion a year on programs to alleviate poverty, yet…