Welfare Reform and Beyond

Welfare Reform and Beyond
Author: Isabel V. Sawhill
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2004-05-26
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0815798822

The Brookings Institution's Welfare Reform & Beyond Initiative was created to inform the critical policy debates surrounding the upcoming congressional reauthorization of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and a number of related programs that were created or dramatically altered by the 1996 landmark welfare reform legislation. The goal of the project has been to take the large volume of existing and forthcoming research studies and shape them into a more coherent and policy-oriented whole. This capstone collection gathers twenty brief essays (published between January 2001 and February 2002) that focus on assessing the record of welfare reform, specific issues likely to be debated before the TANF reauthorization, and a broader set of policy options for low-income families. It is a reader-friendly volume that will provide policymakers, the press, and the interested public with a comprehensive guide to the numerous issues that must be addressed as Congress considers the future of the nation's antipoverty policies. The collection covers the following topics and features a new introduction from the editors: - An Overview of Effects to Date - Welfare Reform Reauthorization: An Overview of Problems and Issues - A Tax Proposal for Working Families with Children - Welfare Reform and Poverty - Reducing Non-Marital Births - Which Welfare Reforms are Best for Children? - Welfare and the Economy - What Can Be Done to Reduce Teen Pregnancy and Out-of-Wedlock Births? - Changing Welfare Offices - State Programs - Welfare Reform and Employment - Fragile Families, Welfare Reform, and Marriage - Health Insurance, Welfare, and Work - Helping the Hard-to-Employ - Sanctions and Welfare Reform - Child Care and Welfare Reform - Job Retention and Advancement in Welfare Reform - Housing and Welfare Reform - Non-Citizens - Block Grant Structure - Food Stamps - Work Support System - Possible Welfare Re

Evaluating Welfare Reform

Evaluating Welfare Reform
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 159
Release: 1999-11-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0309184118

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 fundamentally changed the nation's social welfare system, replacing a federal entitlement program for low-income families, called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), with state-administered block grants, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. PRWORA furthered a trend started earlier in the decade under so called "waiver" programs-state experiments with different types of AFDC rules-toward devolution of design and control of social welfare programs from the federal government to the states. The legislation imposed several new, major requirements on state use of federal welfare funds but otherwise freed states to reconfigure their programs as they want. The underlying goal of the legislation is to decrease dependence on welfare and increase the self-sufficiency of poor families in the United States. In summer 1998, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) asked the Committee on National Statistics of the National Research Council to convene a Panel on Data and Methods for Measuring the Effects of Changes in Social Welfare Programs. The panel's overall charge is to study and make recommendations on the best strategies for evaluating the effects of PRWORA and other welfare reforms and to make recommendations on data needs for conducting useful evaluations. This interim report presents the panel's initial conclusions and recommendations. Given the short length of time the panel has been in existence, this report necessarily treats many issues in much less depth than they will be treated in the final report. The report has an immediate short-run goal of providing DHHS-ASPE with recommendations regarding some of its current projects, particularly those recently funded to study "welfare leavers"-former welfare recipients who have left the welfare rolls as part of the recent decline in welfare caseloads.

Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition

Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2001-08-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0309171342

Reform of welfare is one of the nation's most contentious issues, with debate often driven more by politics than by facts and careful analysis. Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition identifies the key policy questions for measuring whether our changing social welfare programs are working, reviews the available studies and research, and recommends the most effective ways to answer those questions. This book discusses the development of welfare policy, including the landmark 1996 federal law that devolved most of the responsibility for welfare policies and their implementation to the states. A thorough analysis of the available research leads to the identification of gaps in what is currently known about the effects of welfare reform. Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition specifies what-and why-we need to know about the response of individual states to the federal overhaul of welfare and the effects of the many changes in the nation's welfare laws, policies, and practices. With a clear approach to a variety of issues, Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition will be important to policy makers, welfare administrators, researchers, journalists, and advocates on all sides of the issue.

Welfare Reform

Welfare Reform
Author: United States. General Accounting Office
Publisher:
Total Pages: 44
Release: 1998
Genre: Public welfare
ISBN:

Welfare Reform in America

Welfare Reform in America
Author: P.M. Sommers
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2013-04-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9400973896

This is the second in a series of books growing out of the annual Mid dlebury College Conference on Economic Issues. The second confer ence, held in April 1980, focused on goals and realities of welfare reform. The objectives of the conference were threefold: (1) evaluation of the antipoverty effort so far; (2) discussion of welfare reform alternatives; and (3) prediction of how new initiatives would change work behavior and productivity. During the time this country has been engaged in a "war on poverty," two massive efforts to reform welfare, Richard M. Nixon's Family As sistance Plan (FAP) and Jimmy Carter's Program for Better Jobs and Income (PBJI), were proposed. Both defined national benefit levels and featured a negative income tax. Both measures were defeated in Congress. More modest efforts at reform have, however, changed the economic landscape. Because of the rapid growth in cash and in-kind transfer programs, income poverty is no longer the serious problem that it was in 1964. In fact, looking at the proliferation of programs and the substantial surge in participation rates, some politicians have even advocated a period of government retrenchment. In 1971, the governor of California vii viii INTRODUCTION proposed (and implemented) a major welfare reform in an attempt to stem the rapid growth of welfare caseloads that began in his state in 1967-68. He argued that savings from administrative improvements could be used to raise benefits for the "truly needy.

Generation Unbound

Generation Unbound
Author: Isabel V. Sawhill
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2014-09-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0815725590

Over half of all births to young adults in the United States now occur outside of marriage, and many are unplanned. The result is increased poverty and inequality for children. The left argues for more social support for unmarried parents; the right argues for a return to traditional marriage. In Generation Unbound, Isabel V. Sawhill offers a third approach: change "drifters" into "planners." In a well-written and accessible survey of the impact of family structure on child well-being, Sawhill contrasts "planners," who are delaying parenthood until after they marry, with "drifters," who are having unplanned children early and outside of marriage. These two distinct patterns are contributing to an emerging class divide and threatening social mobility in the United States. Sawhill draws on insights from the new field of behavioral economics, showing that it is possible, by changing the default, to move from a culture that accepts a high number of unplanned pregnancies to a culture in which adults only have children when they are ready to be a parent.

For Better and For Worse

For Better and For Worse
Author: Greg J. Duncan
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2002-01-17
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1610448286

The 1996 welfare reform bill marked the beginning of a new era in public assistance. Although the new law has reduced welfare rolls, falling caseloads do not necessarily mean a better standard of living for families. In For Better and For Worse, editors Greg J. Duncan and P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale and a roster of distinguished experts examine the evidence and evaluate whether welfare reform has met one of its chief goals-improving the well-being of the nation's poor children. For Better and For Worse opens with a lively political history of the welfare reform legislation, which demonstrates how conservative politicians capitalize on public concern over such social problems as single parenthood to win support for the radical reforms. Part I reviews how individual states redesigned, implemented, and are managing their welfare systems. These chapters show that most states appear to view maternal employment, rather that income enhancement and marriage, as key to improving child well-being. Part II focuses on national and multistate evaluations of the changes in welfare to examine how families and children are actually faring under the new system. These chapters suggest that work-focused reforms have not hurt children, and that reforms that provide financial support for working families can actually enhance children's development. Part III presents a variety of perspectives on policy options for the future. Remarkable here is the common ground for both liberals and conservatives on the need to support work and at the same time strengthen safety-net programs such as Food Stamps. Although welfare reform-along with the Earned Income Tax Credit and the booming economy of the nineties-has helped bring mothers into the labor force and some children out of poverty, the nation still faces daunting challenges in helping single parents become permanent members of the workforce. For Better and For Worse gathers the most recent data on the effects of welfare reform in one timely volume focused on improving the life chances of poor children.

The Political Economy of Welfare Reform in the United States

The Political Economy of Welfare Reform in the United States
Author: Mary Reintsma
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2007-01-01
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 184720712X

The welfare system in the United States underwent profound changes as a result of the groundbreaking welfare legislation passed in 1996 entitled The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). The Political Economy of Welfare Reform in the United States examines in detail the legislative process that gave rise to PRWORA and presents two alternative theories to explain this process; the traditional public interest model of government and the public choice model. On the basis of a detailed historical analysis of welfare programs and policies in the US, the author explains the two alternative theories and engages in a detailed institutional and statistical analysis to make a convincing argument for the validity of the public choice paradigm. Mary Reintsma s book reveals how the outcome of any legislation is highly dependent on the input of interest groups and the interactions of such groups with those responsible for passing the legislation. The Political Economy of Welfare Reform in the United States will appeal to academics and researchers involved in public sector economics, public choice theory and welfare economics reform.