Welfare reform in the 1990s represented a fundamental policy shift in the United States’ response to poverty from supporting benefits dependency to promoting economic self-sufficiency. Social work’s capacity to integrate this policy shift into practice is central to meeting its mission to alleviate poverty. This study looked at the preparation of future social workers as a way to gauge the extent of the profession’s integration of this shift. Findings showed that about half of social work education programs do not include skills and knowledge related to economic self-sufficiency in their curricula, and there is considerable variability among those that do. Most program administrators are interested in expanding their curricula but are hampered by a lack of resources and faculty and student resistance.