One of the most violent attacks undertaken by conservative U.S. think tanks has been on the federal anti-poverty programs. Beginning in the 1980s the Manhattan Institute sponsored and promoted two publications that urged the elimination of the federal anti-poverty program. "Wealth and Poverty", concluded that poverty was the result of personal irresponsibility, while "Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950 - 1980", observed that anti-poverty programs reduced marriage incentives, discouraged workers form accepting low-wage jobs, and encouraged unintended births among low income teenage and adult women.
These books were followed by Lawrence Mead's "Beyond Entitlement: The Social Obligations of Citizenship", which blamed governments for perpetuating poverty by not requiring welfare recipients to work. Other conservative grantees have used their funds for more than a decade to spread this kind of conservative political rhetoric and policy opinion through major media and conservative-controlled print and broadcast outlets. The redefinition of the problem and the demonization of the poor finally culminated in the passage of the
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One of the most impressive examples of the dissemination of ideology through educational activities has been performed by the UK- based Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), founded in 1955. Dedicated to the idea of free-markets the IEA from the beginning saw the "education" of the public as a key element in the distribution of their ideology. "The philosophy of the market economy must be widely accepted; this requires a large programme of education ..."
Aiming at the wide acceptance of their ideas, the IEA undertook an extensive publishing program with the objective to make the fairly complex concepts of economic liberalism and monetarism available to a student or sixth-form audience. In the 1960s IEA papers normally reached the hands of students through the university Conservative Associations.
The work that the IEA did in this field reaped a rich harvest during the 1970s and 1980s, as many of the younger political activists who staffed the various free-market think-tanks, such as the
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The ASI, based in London, is a private economic policy institution promoting corporate privatization, regulatory reform, and government restructuring worldwide. The Institute's objective is to promote research into market economics and to develop market-based policies for governments. The ASI has three divisions: Policy Division, International Division and Conference Division.
The United States entered a new era in social policy in 1996 by enacting historic legislation that changed the philosophy as well as the structure of protection for the needy. After 61 years under a welfare system in which the federal government had guaranteed cash assistance to the poor for an indefinite period, welfare policy was revised to put new emphasis and reliance on the states while stressing individual self-sufficiency and the initiation or resumption of work among beneficiaries. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, the official name of welfare reform, was passed by Congress in August 1996.