Now featuring a color design, this best-selling text for policy analysis provides students with a comprehensive overview of social welfare policy in the United States while examining cutting-edge issues. Thoroughly updated and revised to reflect the impact of dramatic changes in social welfare policy, the fifth edition continues to focus on the examination of how the major sectors of social welfare policy - the voluntary, governmental, corporate, and corporate sectors - operate and co-exist (the "pluralist approach"), while also offering a clear, user-friendly framework for policy analysis. Among the cutting edge issues covered in this edition are: technology and social welfare policy, the fringe economy, religion and social policy, the transformation of public assistance policy into labor policy, and the relationship between tax policy and social welfare policy. In the fifth edition, you will find a new chapter on Religion and Social Policy that examines the past and present relationship between religion and the creation and the implementation of social policy. The discrimination chapter now includes coverage of the minority middle class and a comprehensive examination of gay and lesbian marriage policies. This chapter also has an updated section on immigration policies since 9/11. Chapter 5, Poverty in America, now includes a section on the fringe economy and its impact on poverty, as well as a new section on Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) and the digital divide. Chapter 8, Making of Governmental Policy, provides up-dates on special interests, lobbyists, and their influence on the 2004 election. Chapter 9, Tax Policy and Income Distribution, examines the impact of theBush tax cuts on social welfare policy. Chapter 11, Public Assistance Programs, includes updated information on public assistance programs, including an evaluation of the effects of welfare reform legislation and new changes to TANF. Chapter 16, Housing Policies, includes new material on obstacles to homeownership, such as predatory home mortgages, increases in housing prices, and racial and class discrimination.