This workbook and the accompanying MicroCase databases function as an interactive tool that provides students with a platform for exploring current social welfare issues. The text, the first MicroCase book written for social workers by a social work researcher, addresses the social issues which practitioners, researchers, and clients find important. To complete the exercises in the book, students use the databases on the accompanying CD-ROM, which contain the same current data used by social scientists all over the world to do their research. These five data files allow students to compare states, countries, public attitudes, and the effect of time on some of the most important social welfare issues of our day.