From dependency to child maltreatment? Changing frames in U.S. newspaper coverage of welfare policy

Prior research has extensively documented dependency framing in welfare discourse during the mid-to-late twentieth century, but less is known about whether this framing persists in more recent periods. This study examines U.S. newspaper discourse on social welfare during three periods marking key welfare and child welfare policy shifts: 1994-1996 (welfare reform), 2016-2018 (child welfare reform), and 2021-2023 (post-pandemic).

We randomly sampled 40 ProQuest-indexed newspaper articles from each period (120 total) addressing welfare, child welfare, unemployment insurance, or education spending. Using a mixed deductive-inductive qualitative content analysis, we examined recurring frames, their relationships, and how they were articulated across policy domains and periods. Our analysis characterizes how these frames organize meaning and share an underlying cultural logic rather than estimating their prevalence in the broader population of news coverage.

Consistent with prior research, dependency framing was common in the 1990s sample. Dependency became less prominent relative to child maltreatment framing in the later periods. The policy program under discussion also shaped which frames were most salient. Despite the declining prominence of dependency language, classic culture of poverty logics (individual pathology and family blame) persisted across periods.

Moralized narratives associated with culture of poverty theory were rearticulated in forms that increasingly centered children's endangerment. These findings demonstrate how longstanding cultural logics can persist even as their language and policy focus change, with implications for the construction of deservingness in social welfare debates.