Center on Budget & Policy Priorities Report: TANF and How Well Does It Provide Income Support for Poor Families?

President Clinton signed the 1996 welfare law 15 years ago today, creating the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant to replace the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. We’ll present a series of posts this week that provide a closer look at how welfare reform has played out over the last 15 years. Today’s post focuses on TANF as a source of income support for poor families.

TANF’s early years witnessed unprecedented declines in the number of families receiving cash assistance — and unprecedented increases in the share of single mothers working, especially those with less than a high school education. But since then, nearly all of the employment gains have disappeared, and TANF caseloads have responded only modestly to increased need during this deep and long downturn.

As the following charts make clear, TANF remains an important source of income support for a small, but vulnerable group of families. However, because relatively few families receive TANF and benefits are very low, TANF plays a much more limited role in helping families escape poverty or deep poverty (i.e., income below half the poverty line) today than AFDC did.

www.offthechartsblog.org/tanf-at-15-part-i-how-well-does-it-provide-income-support-for-poor-families/