Temporary Assistance for Needy Families

U. S. federal aid program

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF ///t//æ//n//ɪ//f/) is a federal assistance program of the United States. It began on July 1, 1997, and succeeded the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, providing cash assistance to indigent American families through the United States Department of Health and Human Services. TANF is often simply referred to as welfare, but some argue this is a misnomer. Unlike AFDC, which provided a guaranteed cash benefit to eligible families, TANF is a block grant to states that creates no federal entitlement to welfare and is used by states to provide non welfare services, including educational services, to employed people. The TANF program, emphasizing the welfare to work principle, is a grant given to each state to run its own welfare program and designed to be temporary in nature and has several limits and requirements. The TANF grant has a five year lifetime limit and requires that all recipients of welfare aid must find work within three years of receiving aid, including single parents who are required to work at least 30 hours per week (35 for two parent families). Failure to comply with work requirements could result in loss of benefits. TANF funds may be used for the following reasons: to provide assistance to needy families so that children can be cared for at home; to end the dependence of needy parents on government benefits by promoting job preparation, work and marriage; to prevent and reduce the incidence of out of wedlock pregnancies; and to encourage the formation and maintenance of two parent families.

Prior to TANF, Aid to Families with Dependent Children was a major federal assistance program that was coming under heavy criticism. Some argued that such programs were ineffective, promoted dependency on the government, and encouraged behaviors detrimental to escaping from poverty. Some people also argued that TANF is detrimental to its recipients because using these programs have a stigma attached to them, which makes the people that use them less likely to participate politically to defend this program, and thus the programs have been subsequently weakened. Beginning with President Ronald Reagan's administration and continuing through the first few years of the Clinton administration, growing dissatisfaction with AFDC, particularly the rise in welfare caseloads, led an increasing number of states to seek waivers from AFDC rules to allow states to more stringently enforce work requirements for welfare recipients. The 27 percent increase in caseloads between 1990 and 1994 accelerated the push by states to implement more radical welfare reform. However, the findings that welfare to work programs did have some effect in reducing dependence on government increased support among policymakers for moving welfare recipients into employment. While liberals and conservatives agreed on the importance of transitioning families from government assistance to jobs, they disagreed on how to accomplish this goal. Liberals thought that welfare reform should expand opportunities for welfare mothers to receive training and work experience that would help them raise their families' living standards by working more and at higher wages. Conservatives argued that welfare to work reform would be beneficial by creating role models out of mothers, promoting maternal self esteem and sense of control, and introducing productive daily routines into family life. Furthermore, they argued that reforms would eliminate welfare dependence by sending a powerful message to teens and young women to postpone childbearing. Liberals responded that the reform sought by conservatives would overwhelm severely stressed parents, deepen the poverty of many families, and force young children into unsafe and unstimulating child care situations. In addition, they asserted that welfare reform would reduce parents' ability to monitor the behaviors of their children, leading to problems in child and adolescent functioning. In 1992, as a presidential candidate, Bill Clinton pledged to "end welfare as we know it" by requiring families receiving welfare to work after three years. As president, Clinton was attracted to welfare expert and Harvard University Professor David Ellwood's proposal on welfare reform and thus Clinton eventually appointed Ellwood to co chair his welfare task force. Ellwood supported converting welfare into a transitional system. He advocated providing assistance to families for a limited time, after which recipients would be required to earn wages from a regular job or a work opportunity program. The debates in Congress about welfare reform centered around five themes: and the House voted 256–170 in favor of welfare reform legislation, formally known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA). Clinton signed the bill into law on August 22, 1996. PRWORA replaced AFDC with TANF and dramatically changed the way the federal government and states determine eligibility and provide aid for needy families. Before 1997, the federal government designed the overall program requirements and guidelines, while states administered the program and determined eligibility for benefits. Since 1997, states have been given block grants and both design and administer their own programs. Access to welfare and amount of assistance varied quite a bit by state and locality under AFDC, both because of the differences in state standards of need and considerable subjectivity in caseworker evaluation of qualifying "suitable homes". However, welfare recipients under TANF are actually in completely different programs depending on their state of residence, with different social services available to them and different requirements for maintaining aid.

Between 1996 and 2000, the number of welfare recipients plunged by 6.5 million, or 53% nationally. The number of caseloads was lower in 2000 than at any time since 1969, and the percentages of persons receiving public assistance income (less than 3%) was the lowest on record. Since the implementation of TANF occurred during a period of strong economic growth, there are questions about how much of the decline in caseloads is attributable to TANF program requirements. First, the number of caseloads began declining after 1994, the year with the highest number of caseloads, well before the enactment of TANF, suggesting that TANF was not solely responsible for the caseload decline. Research suggests that both changes in welfare policy and economic growth played a substantial role in this decline, and that no larger than one third of the decline in caseloads is attributable to TANF.

One of the major goals of TANF was to increase work among welfare recipients. During the post welfare reform period, employment did increase among single mothers. Single mothers with children showed little changes in their labor force participation rates throughout the 1980s and into the mid 1990s, but between 1994 and 1999, their labor force participation rose by 10%. Among welfare leavers, it was estimated that close to two thirds worked at a future point in time About 20 percent of welfare leavers are not working, without a spouse, and without any public assistance. While the participation of many low income single parents in the labor market has increased, their earnings and wages remained low, and their employment was concentrated in low wage occupations and industries: 78 percent of employed low income single parents were concentrated in four typically low wage occupations: service; administrative support and clerical; operators, fabricators, and laborers; and sales and related jobs. While the average income among TANF recipients increased over the early years of reform, it has become stagnant in the later period; for welfare leavers, their average income remained steady or declined in the later years. During the 1990s, poverty among single mother and their families declined rapidly from 35.4% in 1992 to 24.7% in 2000, a new historic low. TANF requirements have led to massive drops in the number of people receiving cash benefits since 1996, but there has been little change in the national poverty rate during this time. The table below shows these figures along with the annual unemployment rate. + Average monthly TANF recipients, percent of U. S. families in poverty and unemployment rate YearAverage monthly TANF recipientsPoverty rate (%)Annual unemployment rate (%) 1996 12,320,970 11.0 5.4 1997 10,375,993 10.3 4.9 1998 8,347,136 10.0 4.5 1999 6,824,347 9.3 4.2 2000 5,778,034 8.7 4.0 2001 5,359,180 9.2 4.7 2002 5,069,010 9.6 5.8 2003 4,928,878 10.0 6.0 2004 4,748,115 10.2 5.5 2005 4,471,393 9.9 5.1 2006 4,166,659 9.8 4.6 2007 3,895,407 9.8 4.5 2008 3,795,007 10.3 5.4 2009 4,154,366 11.1 8.1 2010 4,375,022 11.7 8.6

Note: 1996 was the last year for the AFDC program, and is shown for comparison. All figures are for calendar years. The poverty rate for families differs from the official poverty rate.

A major impetus for welfare reform was concern about increases in out of wedlock births and declining marriage rates, especially among low income women. The major goals of the 1996 legislation included reducing out of wedlock births and increasing rates and stability of marriages. However, a similar analysis of post TANF effect revealed less consistent results. Nationally, only 0.4% of closed cases gave marriage as the reason for leaving welfare. In other words, individuals who were not married were more likely to stay unmarried, and those who were married were more likely to stay married. Her explanation behind this, which is consistent with other studies, is that after reform single women were required to work more, increasing their income and reducing their incentive to give up independence for marriage, whereas for married women, post reform there was potentially a significant increase in the number of hours they would have to work when single, discouraging divorce. In addition to marriage and divorce, welfare reform was also concerned about unwed childbearing. Specific provisions in TANF were aimed at reducing unwed childbearing. For example, TANF provided cash bonuses to states with the largest reductions in unwed childbearing that are not accompanied by more abortions. States were also required to eliminate cash benefits to unwed teens under age 18 who did not reside with their parents. TANF allowed states to impose family caps on the receipt of additional cash benefits from unwed childbearing. Between 1994 and 1999, unwed childbearing among teenagers declined 20 percent among 15 to 17 year olds and 10 percent among 18 and 19 year olds. Any fears that family caps would lead to more abortions was allayed by declining numbers and rates of abortion during this period.

Proponents of welfare reform argued that encouraging maternal employment will enhance children's cognitive and emotional development. A working mother, proponents assert, provides a positive role model for her children. Opponents, on the other hand, argued that requiring women to work at low pay puts additional stress on mothers, reduces the quality time spent with children, and diverts income to work related expenses such as transportation and childcare. Another study found large and significant effects of welfare reform on educational achievement and aspirations, and on social behavior (i. e. teacher assessment of compliance and self control, competence and sensitivity). The positive effects were largely due to the quality of childcare arrangement and afterschool programs that accompanied the move from welfare to work for these recipients. Yet another study found that substitution from maternal care to other informal care had caused a significant drop in performance of young children. In a program with less generous benefits, Kalili et al. (2002) found that maternal work (measured in months and hours per week) had little overall effect on children's antisocial behavior, anxious/depressed behavior or positive behavior. They find no evidence that children were harmed by such transitions; if anything, their mothers report that their children are better behaved and have better mental health. Synthesizing findings from an extensive selection of publications, Golden (2005) reached the conclusion that children's outcomes were largely unchanged when examining children's developmental risk, including health status, behavior or emotional problems, suspensions from school, and lack of participation in extracurricular activities. She argues that contrary to the fears of many, welfare reform and an increase in parental work did not seem to have reduced children's well being overall. More abused and neglected children had not entered the child welfare system. However, at the same time, improvement in parental earnings and reductions in child poverty had not consistently improved outcomes for children.

While the material and economic well being of welfare mothers after the enactment of TANF has been the subject of countless studies, their mental and physical well being has received little attention. Research on the latter has found that welfare recipients face mental and physical problems at rates that are higher than the general population. Such problems which include depression, anxiety disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, and domestic violence mean that welfare recipients face many more barriers to employment and are more at risk of welfare sanctions due to noncompliance with work requirements and other TANF regulations Similarly, interviews with now employed welfare recipients find that partly as a result of their increased material resources from working, the women felt that work has led to higher self esteem, new opportunities to expand their social support networks, and increased feelings of self efficacy. Furthermore, they became less socially isolated and potentially less prone to depression. At the same time, however, many women were experiencing stress and exhaustion from trying to balance work and family responsibilities.

For single fathers within the program, there is a small percentage increase of employment in comparison to single mothers, but there is a significant increase of increased wages throughout their time in the program. As of June 2020, the number of one parent families participating in TANF is 432,644.

Enacted in July 1997, TANF was set for reauthorization in Congress in 2002. However, Congress was unable to reach an agreement for the next several years, and as a result, several extensions were granted to continue funding the program. TANF was finally reauthorized under the Deficit Reduction ACT (DRA) of 2005. DRA included several changes to the original TANF program. It raised work participation rates, increased the share of welfare recipients subject to work requirements, limited the activities that could be counted as work, prescribed hours that could be spent doing certain work activities, and required states to verify activities for each adult beneficiary. In February 2009, as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), Congress created a new TANF Emergency Fund (TANF EF), funded at $5 billion and available to states, territories, and tribes for federal fiscal years 2009 and 2010. The original TANF law provided for a Contingency Fund (CF) funded at $2 billion which allows states meeting economic triggers to draw additional funds based upon high levels of state MOE spending. This fund was expected to (and did) run out in FY 2010. The TANF Emergency Fund provided states 80 percent of the funding for spending increases in three categories of TANF related expenditures in FYs 2009 or 2010 over FYs 2007 or 2008. The three categories of expenditures that could be claimed were basic assistance, non recurrent short term benefits, and subsidized employment. The third category listed, subsidized employment, made national headlines as states created nearly 250,000 adult and youth jobs through the funding. The program however expired on September 30, 2010, on schedule with states drawing down the entire $5 billion allocated by ARRA. TANF was scheduled for reauthorization again in 2010. However, Congress did not work on legislation to reauthorize the program and instead they extended the TANF block grant through September 30, 2011, as part of the Claims Resolution Act. During this period Congress once again did not reauthorize the program but passed a three month extension through December 31, 2011.

Peter Edelman, an assistant secretary in the Department of Health and Human Services, resigned from the Clinton administration in protest of Clinton signing the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, which he called, "The worst thing Bill Clinton has done." According to Edelman, the 1996 welfare reform law destroyed the safety net. It increased poverty, lowered income for single mothers, put people from welfare into homeless shelters, and left states free to eliminate welfare entirely. It moved mothers and children from welfare to work, but many of them are not making enough to survive. Many of them were pushed off welfare rolls because they did not show up for an appointment, when they had no transportation to get to the appointment, or were not informed about the appointment, said Edelman. Critics later said that TANF was successful during the Clinton administration when the economy was booming, but failed to support the poor when jobs were no longer available during the downturn, particularly the 2007–2008 financial crisis, and particularly after the lifetime limits imposed by TANF may have been reached by many recipients.