Decades of neoliberal reform reinstated the family as first-line welfare provider

Evidence

Today the effects of this shift in public finance are experientially self-evident. The Federal Reserve recently published a report seeking to explain the fact that a growing number of young adults are living at home with their parents well into their twenties and even thirties—a demographic trend it attributes first and foremost to college debt. The shift from public to private investment in so-called human capital has forcefully reinvigorated the importance of family debt networks and inherited wealth in the shaping of social destinies. The effect of more than three decades of neoliberal economic reform has been to reinstate the legal and economic function of the private family as the first-line provider of welfare, very much in keeping with the policy prescriptions of neoliberals themselves. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 260

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that reinstating the family contradicts the usual caricature that neoliberalism atomizes individuals and destroys families is worth chasing — does this appear in other neoliberal scholarship?
• XREF: connects to: Welfare-state cuts halt the intergenerational mobility they once enabled — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 19; Family loyalty is central, not marginal, to American neoliberal welfare theory — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 213; Neoliberal welfare reform aimed to convert natural family charity into legal duty — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 241 (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• Families and neighborhoods were promoted to replace a dismantled welfare state #corroborates (0.95) — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 99
• Family household was reframed as a site of political discipline #expands (0.85)
• Neoliberals pushed a return to the hated family means-test #expands (0.85) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 215
• Neoliberals endorsed state coercion to enforce kinship obligations over income redistribution #expands (0.85) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 212
• Neoliberals opposed no-fault divorce to force families to absorb social costs #expands (0.80) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 241