Temporary Aid to Needy Families and Poverty

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Literature Review

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) was reformed to “reinforces the economic and social status quo” instead of stabilizing employment for low-income women by creating education and work training programs, changed AFDC to TANF (Bok, 2004). Bok (2004) determined that the TANF policies were resistant to educating the low-income, especially women of color, and giving them training to become productive employees, or to find jobs in industries that pay more than minimum wage. Bok (2004) wanted to learn if the work-first approach to employment was effective as the safety net of welfare, formerly AFDC, was removed for low-income women. Bok (2004) used prior research from other studies, data from the US Census Bureau and reviewing previous literature to get her key data.

The primary goal of PRWORA, to reduce the number of people on welfare had been met as it reduced by more than one half due to more women recipients joining the workforce (Bok, 2004). However, Bok (2004) determined that a bigger pool of poverty was created by forcing women into low-wage jobs, with no other type of assistance. Bok (2004) discovered that there was much resistance to creating programs that would educate and train women entering the workforce for higher wage jobs that would allow them to move out of poverty. She determined that a combination of training (job search skills, skill building and education) would be more cost effective and put women in life sustaining jobs, not just minimum wage jobs (Bok, 2004).

Wood, Moore, and Rangarajan in 2008, agreed that the PWRORA had welfare cases reduced greatly and “employment among single mothers increased substantially” and created a surge in studies of the condition of those who no longer received welfare and how they “progressed economically over time.” After the 10-year mark of PWRORA, more studies on the long-term “economic progress of welfare recipients under TANF” were completed to see if there was fiscal growth as reported previously, was it steady or were there repeated setbacks for the recipients (Wood, Moore, & Rangarajan, 2008).

As the goals of PRWORA were being met, it needed to be seen to what extent to which these goals were being met (Wood, Moore, & Rangarajan, 2008). The dominant inference from the literature and studies was that “welfare reform, as well as a strong economy and other policy changes that increase work incentives (in particular, the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit [EITC]), are associated with dramatic declines in welfare rolls, and large changes in the labor force participation patterns of single mothers (Wood, Moore, & Rangarajan, 2008). The literature also found that many of the TANF recipients left the program, but went to jobs that paid very low wages.

The effect of the new TANF rules did “increase the employment rates of single mothers, the group most affected by welfare reform,” from 60 percent in 1993 to about 70 percent in 2004. However, if the mothers were followed longer than a year, the rates of employment growth slowed or even declined a small amount in following years (Wood, Moore, & Rangarajan, 2008). The studies that have followed TANF recipients usually do not go beyond 3 years so there is not much data on the “long-term employment patterns of TANF recipients” (Wood, Moore, & Rangarajan, 2008). One study looked at recipients from an urban Michigan county saw that there was a “high degree of job instability and limited mobility to high-quality jobs” (Wood, Moore, & Rangarajan, 2008). Other studies also presented low-wage workers and welfare recipients showed that “employment instability was particularly pronounced among workers with relatively limited education and employment histories” (Wood, Moore, & Rangarajan, 2008).

Women were no longer on welfare, but were employed in jobs that were not life-sustaining. Studies have shown that income is affected by increases in employment and poverty status. It was shown that “TANF recipients’ income increases after they leave welfare for work, but low earnings and high poverty rates among the former welfare recipients” returned after a time (Wood, Moore, & Rangarajan, 2008). There is little known about the “stability of income increases and whether gains are maintained” (Wood, Moore, & Rangarajan, 2008). There has not been many studies of the outcomes of those that have left the TANF beyond 3 years and cannot really give a true picture of their experiences. (Wood, Moore, & Rangarajan, 2008).

It has been stated that welfare reform created major “changes in the lives of single mothers living in poverty” mainly by connecting eligibility for cash support to working (Hildebrandt, 2016). “Women were expected to work their way out of poverty starting with low-wage jobs and then move up to better paying jobs” (Hildebrandt, 2016). In a 2016 study by Hildebrandt, she followed women that were terminated from the welfare program and found that their lives were not improved by termination within the program. This study was over a 2-year period with 5 different interviews. Hildebrandt (2016) discovered that there were health and socioeconomic factors that hindered their movement out of poverty after leaving the TANF program. The major ideas that emerged focused on health challenges, socioeconomic marginalization, and the impact of the TANF policy (Hildebrandt, 2016).

The results of this study showed the struggle that many women face when the safety net of welfare is not available. The TANF program took away that net and Hildebrandt’s study (2016) “provided evidence about why it is so difficult for some participants to use TANF welfare to become self-sufficient while others gain more benefits from it.”

Pre-existing Policies

TANF is the policy that exists as a help for low-income families and is the current program for what most people know as welfare. A review of the existing federal policy and how it funnels funds to the states is below. It is important to understand the actual policy that is used to get the money to the states and then what the states are doing with the funds.

Federal Policy. TANF was the revamped welfare program that was to focus families on achieving self-sufficiency, giving states, “block grants to design and operate programs that accomplish one of the purposes of the TANF program” (Fowler & Besharov, 1993). TANF binds eligibility for cash payments “to employment and requires legislative reauthorization every 10 years” (Hildebrandt, 2016). The TANF program’s four main purposes according to US Health and Human Services are to: