State Politics, Race, and “Welfare” as a Funding Stream: Cash Assistance Spending Under Temporary Assistance for Needy Families

Guided by the conceptual frameworks of social support appraisal mechanisms and cultural variant perspectives, the reported experiences of 23 Black grandmothers parenting grandchildren who receive cash assistance under the current welfare program, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), were used to integrate macro- and micro-level perspectives by exploring mechanisms used to appraise social support resources within a historical context. Mechanisms of social support appraisals included personal esteem (i.e., adaptive pride, self-reliance, and personal resources) and social penetration (i.e., family respect and responsibility, reaction to myths or stereotypical views held about poor people, and normative child-centered activities) as economically poor grandmothers demonstrated strong personal integrity and familial responsibility. Grandmothers relied on a wide range of sources for formal and informal support to provide for their grandchildren. Recommendations for future research are discussed to fortify established family defenses.

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Cash Assistance in America: The Role of Race, Politics, and Poverty

The Review of Black Political Economy ◽

10.1177/0034644619865272 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 46 (4) ◽

pp. 306-324 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Bradley L. Hardy ◽

Rhucha Samudra ◽

Jourdan A. Davis

Keyword(s):

Safety Net ◽

Research Literature ◽

State Spending ◽

Disadvantaged Communities ◽

Cash Assistance ◽

Race Politics ◽

Black Residents ◽

Temporary Assistance ◽

Negative Link

We examine the predictors of state spending on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cash assistance, which has fallen dramatically since the passage of welfare reform in 1996. Over the 2000s, states allocating 33% or more of their TANF expenditures toward cash assistance are more likely to have higher minimum wages and are more liberal, though with fewer Black residents—both overall and on the TANF caseload. Our preferred empirical specifications suggest a negative link between state basic assistance expenditures—which we use as a measure of cash assistance—and the proportion of Black residents on the state’s TANF caseload. These findings contribute to a longstanding body of research examining the political economy of racial disparities within the welfare system and support further investigation into the mechanisms driving these observed associations. Upon considering the Kerner Commission’s call to reinvest in economically disadvantaged communities, it is important to consider how reform proposals modeled off of TANF may extend to new domains of the American social safety net. Our findings, as well as those of others within the welfare research literature, recommend a closer look at whether and how race operates within systems of devolved authority.

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Temporary Assistance for Needy Families

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199838509.013.018 ◽

2014 ◽

Author(s):

R. Kent Weaver

Keyword(s):

Single Mothers ◽

Low Income ◽

Block Grant ◽

Work Requirements ◽

Cash Assistance ◽

Grant Program ◽

The Social ◽

Cash Benefits ◽

The Creation ◽

Temporary Assistance

This chapter examines the development and implementation of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block-grant program, and its predecessor, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Federal cash assistance to low-income, primarily single-parent families has been politically controversial since the creation of AFDC in 1935. The creation of TANF in 1996 imposed time limits on receipt of cash assistance and strengthened work requirements, while shifting the focus of expenditures away from cash benefits toward services intended to move adult recipients into work. TANF caseloads have fallen dramatically since 1996, and the employment rate of low-income single mothers has increased, but the social impacts of the TANF program have been mixed.

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Temporary Assistance for Needy Families

Encyclopedia of Social Work ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780199975839.013.1301 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Vincent A. Fusaro

Keyword(s):

Low Income ◽

Single Mother ◽

The United States ◽

Income Poverty ◽

Relative Role ◽

Block Grant ◽

Cash Assistance ◽

Behavioral Rules ◽

Large Expansion ◽

Temporary Assistance

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is a federal block grant program with a state contribution requirement that supports the provision of state aid to low-income families with children in the United States, including but not limited to cash assistance. Created by the 1996 welfare reform law, which ended entitlement to cash benefits under TANF’s predecessor Aid to Families with Dependent Children, TANF cash aid includes time limits and work requirements. States are also free to set their own program rules and may use funds for purposes other than direct poverty relief and services for cash assistance clients. Consequently, TANF varies widely across states in generosity of benefits, behavioral rules to which clients must adhere, and in the uses of program resources, with only about one-quarter of all state and federal TANF funds used for traditional cash assistance. Other priorities funded under TANF include work supports and child care, programming to promote two-parent families, refundable tax credits, and support of state child welfare systems. The end of entitlement to cash assistance under TANF was associated with a sharp decline in welfare caseloads and increases in employment in single-mother families nationwide. The initial implementation of TANF also coincided with a boom economy in the mid- to late-1990s and was immediately preceded by a large expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-wage workers. Studies disagree on the relative role each of these factors played in both caseload and employment trends, and women who moved off of welfare and into the labor force are often in unstable, low-paying jobs. The defining characteristic of cash-assistance receiving families is deep economic deprivation, and benefits do not bring a household above official income poverty in any state. In most states, they do not even bring a family to 50% of poverty. Cash assistance under TANF nonetheless remains an important backstop for families in extremely difficult circumstances.

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Spatial Analyses of Social Policies and of a Social Safety Net

10.20944/preprints201910.0151.v1 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Vicky Albert ◽

Jaewon Lim

Keyword(s):

Growth Rates ◽

Spatial Data ◽

State Level ◽

Safety Net ◽

Spatial Data Analysis ◽

Spatial Clusters ◽

Southern States ◽

Cash Assistance ◽

Families With Children ◽

Temporary Assistance

During the 2008 Great Recession, many families with children relied on cash assistance from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. The present study applied Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) tools to analyze geographically varying spatial clusters of states’ unemployment rates, TANF caseload growth rates, TANF policy choices such as benefit levels and TANF responsiveness rates to the recession. We analyzed 45 contiguous states and Washington D.C. A standardized TANF responsiveness index was developed to compare states’ TANF growth rates relative to their labor market conditions. The western states were found to be very responsive to the recession with ratios greater than one. In contrast, Texas and Arizona, with ratios below 1, were unresponsive to the recession. The presence of strong spatial clusters in unemployment rate and TANF maximum aid were found. In the case of maximum aid, there was a strong presence of Low-Low spatial clusters in Southern States and High-High clusters in Northeastern States. The findings suggest that several neighboring states in the northeast and some in the south had similar levels of financial commitment during the 2008 recessionary as the ones found by earlier research conducted during non-recessionary periods. The findings have implications for future federal actions and for state level collaboration.

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Decomposing the Decline of Cash Assistance in the United States, 1993 to 2016

10.31219/osf.io/b9vft ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Zachary Parolin

Keyword(s):

Single Mother ◽

Participation Rate ◽

The United States ◽

Cash Assistance ◽

Real Value ◽

Compositional Changes ◽

Employment Rates ◽

Eligibility Standards ◽

Temporary Assistance ◽

Percent Decrease

Cash assistance allocations from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and its predecessor program fell from $34.3 billion to $7.4 billion in real value from 1993 to 2016, a 78 percent decrease. Some investigations of TANF point to favorable labor market changes as the source of the decline, while others point to declining benefit levels and barriers to benefit receipt. This study introduces a framework to decompose the decline of TANF cash assistance into changes in need for cash assistance, the participation rate among those meeting income-based eligibility standards, and benefit levels among those receiving cash support. Using the U.S. Current Population Survey, I find that declining participation explains 52 percent of the decline in TANF cash assistance from 1993 onward, whereas declining need explains 21 percent, and declining benefit levels explain 27 percent. The study then applies reweighting techniques to measure the extent to which compositional changes in the population, such as rising employment rates among single mothers, can explain changes in need, participation, and benefit levels. The results suggest that compositional changes explain only 22 percent of the decline of TANF cash assistance, confirming that the majority of the decline is due to reduced participation and benefit levels rather than reduced demand for cash support. Adding the non-compositional share of TANF’s decline back to observed levels of cash spending in 2016 would result in nearly $20 billion in additional transfers, more than the minimum amount necessary to lift all single-mother households out of poverty.

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Decomposing the Decline of Cash Assistance in the United States, 1993 to 2016

Demography ◽

10.1215/00703370-9157471 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Zachary Parolin

Keyword(s):

Single Mothers ◽

Single Mother ◽

Participation Rate ◽

The United States ◽

Cash Assistance ◽

Real Value ◽

Compositional Changes ◽

Employment Rates ◽

Eligibility Standards ◽

Temporary Assistance

Abstract Cash assistance allocations from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and its predecessor program fell from $34.3 billion to $7.4 billion in real value from 1993 to 2016, a 78% decrease. Some investigations of TANF point to favorable labor market changes as the source of the decline, whereas others point to declining benefit levels and barriers to benefit receipt. This study introduces a framework to decompose the decline of TANF cash assistance into changes in need for cash assistance, the participation rate among those meeting income-based eligibility standards, and benefit levels among those receiving cash support. Using the U.S. Current Population Survey, I find that declining participation explains 52% of the decline in TANF cash assistance from 1993 onward, whereas declining need explains 21%, and declining benefit levels explain 27%. The study then applies reweighting techniques to measure the extent to which compositional changes in the population, such as rising employment rates among single mothers, can explain changes in need, participation, and benefit levels. The results suggest that compositional changes explain only 22% of the decline of TANF cash assistance, confirming that the majority of the decline is due to reduced participation and benefit levels rather than reduced demand for cash support. Adding the noncompositional share of the decline in TANF back to observed levels of cash spending in 2016 would result in nearly $20 billion in additional transfers, more than the minimum amount necessary to lift all single-mother households out of poverty.

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Temporary Assistance for Needy Families

Encyclopedia of Social Work ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780199975839.013.393 ◽

2013 ◽

Author(s):

Catherine K. Lawrence

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Personal Responsibility ◽

The United States ◽

Assistance Program ◽

Welfare Program ◽

Cash Assistance ◽

Self Sufficiency ◽

National Welfare ◽

New Generation ◽

Temporary Assistance

In 1996, The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act repealed the 60-year-old national welfare program of Aid to Families with Dependent Children and replaced it with a new cash assistance program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). This law introduced a new generation of rules and regulations for delivering cash and other assistance to families who are poor, and it fundamentally changed the way the United States assists such families and their children. Opinions regarding the success of TANF and its impact on families vary; welfare caseloads have declined since TANF implementation, but economic self-sufficiency eludes many families.

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