Viviana Zelizer’s sociological classic, The Social Meaning of Money, is full of historical examples of the conveyance of time and resources to those in need. The author also depicts the evolution of aid from charities to pensions from the state, from controlled expenditures to variations of individual freedom to choose how to spend.

What sort of money, then, was this new charitable cash? Rejecting the model of dole, wage, or insurance, pensions appropriated instead the forms of the middle-class domestic economy; or, more precisely, they replicated women’s housekeeping cur-rencies. Considering that most recipients of public pensions and a large number of those receiving or at least managing private cash allowances were women, charitable cash was easily transformed into a special category of domestic currency, a sort of collective pin money. Notice the vocabulary: the term “allow-ance” comfortably echoed the familiar income of middle-class wives. Pensions, of course, had been legitimized as a dignified payment by the enormously successful federal program of Civil War payments for veteran soldiers. But there was also a long tradition of pensions as a substitute income for husbandless women. And it was middle-class women who, for the most part, ran this feminized currency exchange; not only did women’s organizations become the strongest supporters of mothers’ pensions but mostly female social workers supervised both public and private forms of cash relief.

Zelizer is one of the few academics who speaks of the poor as worthy to choose. Furthermore, she repeatedly illustrates how participating in systems of trade serves to educate the participants, gives them standing, allows them to be role models to their children, and so on. Instead of the standard starting point that the poor will simply be happy to receive, Zelizer paints out in broad relief the full benefits of market participation to this group of modest means.