US Welfare Reforms

President Clinton enacted PRWORA (Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act) in August 1996. At that time 12,644,915 recipients (includes children) received Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). AFDC became Temporary Assistance for Needy Families TANF). By September 1996 the number of recipients had dropped to 4,076,764 or by 68 percent. The number had gone lower than this but climbed again with the recession of 2008/09.

The US reforms focussed almost wholly on welfare to families – most were single parent families. Today only 9 percent of the families receiving TANF are two parent families. Until 1996 the federal government funded states for AFDC on the basis of matching need. Post 1996 states were bulk-funded but given far more flexibility in how the funds were used. The new legislation stipulated that federal funds could not be used to pay TANF beyond specified time limits – 2 years continuously and 60 months over a lifetime. States were permitted to exempt up to twenty percent of their caseload however allowing for cases of particular hardship and barriers to self-sufficiency.  States could also use their own money to support cases beyond the time-limits. States use the TANF block grants in a variety of ways - not just to pay cash assistance. In 2007 19 percent was spent on childcare and 12 percent was spent on work support and employment programs.

Before the recent recession the employment and poverty levels of single parents had improved. Although teenage birth, a target for reduction under the reforms, dropped through the 1990s and early 2000s the trend has recently reversed. If child abuse and neglect is associated with welfare dependence (and I shall argue elsewhere that it is) the latest US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) report to Congress found a 32 percent decrease in the rate of abuse per 1,000 children since 1993.

Further reading:

A Primer on US Welfare Reform by Robert Moffitt, Kreiger-Eisenhower Professor of Economics at Johns Hopkins University and an IRP affiliate.
http://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc261c.pdf

Another welfare reform included eligibility changes for drug addicted and alcoholic (DA&A) recipients of supplemental social security assistance. Those beneficiaries with an addiction as their main incapacity no longer qualified for assistance. After a process of reclassification many recipients continued to receive welfare under a different incapacity. This reform was initially successful in moving some drug and alcohol addicts into the workforce but the US, like other developed nations, although not to the same degree, continues to experience growing disability caseloads. Now DA&A claimants are not as identifiable.
Very little research exists as to the affects of barring non-reclassified drug addicted and alcoholic recipients from welfare. One localised study concludes;

"The study assesses the net impact of the law on labor force participation and criminal behavior among former DA&A recipients in Washington State, using person-level data on employment and arrests from 2 years before implementation to 3 years after. Hypothesis tests showed unambiguously that the law increased employment but did not increase arrests. Post hoc exploratory analyses?framed by Mark et al. [Mark, M. M., Henry, G. T., & Julnes, G. (2000). Evaluation: An integrated framework for understanding, guiding, and improving policies and programs. San Francisco: Jossey Bass] theory of evaluation as assisted sensemaking with particular attention to generative mechanisms and social betterment?suggest a more nuanced interpretation. The combination of a priori and post hoc analyses confirmed that, as a result of the law, there were fewer DA&As on public supports, more DA&As in the workforce, and no evidence of more criminals menacing the public. Analyses also confirmed that a segment of the population, already poor, was made destitute."

<http://aje.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/25/4/409>


A Power Point Presentation about US Welfare Reforms
Right click here to download power point and here for notes to accompany.
June 2010.