The Change of the Attitude Towards Welfare State - Clinon's Stress on the Active Employment Policy

The thesis deals with the reform of the social system of the United States carried out by the Bill Clinton's signature under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in 1996 and its impact on the U.S. labor market. From a historical excursion comes an assumption that the success of active employment policy depends not only on the sufficiency of employment programs and enhancing employability of citizens, but also on a number of incentives for job search. At the beginning of his second term, Clinton created the most important piece of legislation in the last decades, which along with the measures positively motivating to work anew defined tough conditions for welfare recipients to sustain benefits and it caused significant changes in the behavior of groups of people most dependent on the income from social benefits. The effects of these measures on the labor market and changes of the labor market indicators deal with the analysis in the last part, which shows increase in the labor force participation rate, significant reduction in the amount of social security recipients and, ultimately, improve the living conditions of Americans by using the indicator of poverty.