By Jane Collins, & Victoria Mayer. In light of the 1996 national Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act and other like-minded reforms, studies the working poor in the US, focusing in particular on the relation between welfare and low-wage earnings among working mothers and their struggle to balance child care and wage-earning in poorly paying and often state-funded jobs with inflexible schedules—and the moments when these jobs failed them and they turned to the state for additional aid. Read more.