Background Material and Data on Major Programs Within the Jurisdiction of the Committee on Ways and Means
Author | : |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 608 |
Release | : 1983 |
Genre | : Economic assistance, Domestic |
ISBN | : |
Download Review Of Afdc Program full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online free Review Of Afdc Program ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!
Author | : |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 608 |
Release | : 1983 |
Genre | : Economic assistance, Domestic |
ISBN | : |
Author | : R. Kent Weaver |
Publisher | : Rowman & Littlefield |
Total Pages | : 502 |
Release | : 2000-08-01 |
Genre | : Political Science |
ISBN | : 9780815798354 |
Bill Clinton's first presidential term was a period of extraordinary change in policy toward low-income families. In 1993 Congress enacted a major expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income working families. In 1996 Congress passed and the president signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. This legislation abolished the sixty-year-old Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program and replaced it with a block grant program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. It contained stiff new work requirements and limits on the length of time people could receive welfare benefits.Dramatic change in AFDC was also occurring piecemeal in the states during these years. States used waivers granted by the federal Department of Health and Human Services to experiment with a variety of welfare strategies, including denial of additional benefits for children born or conceived while a mother received AFDC, work requirements, and time limits on receipt of cash benefits. The pace of change at the state level accelerated after the 1996 federal welfare reform legislation gave states increased leeway to design their programs. Ending Welfare as We Know It analyzes how these changes in the AFDC program came about. In fourteen chapters, R. Kent Weaver addresses three sets of questions about the politics of welfare reform: the dismal history of comprehensive AFDC reform initiatives; the dramatic changes in the welfare reform agenda over the past thirty years; and the reasons why comprehensive welfare reform at the national level succeeded in 1996 after failing in 1995, in 1993–94, and on many previous occasions. Welfare reform raises issues of race, class, and sex that are as difficult and divisive as any in American politics. While broad social and political trends helped to create a historic opening for welfare reform in the late 1990s, dramatic legislation was not inevitable. The interaction of contextual factors with short
Author | : United States |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 14 |
Release | : 1999 |
Genre | : Foster children |
ISBN | : |
Author | : Gene Falk |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 90 |
Release | : 2008 |
Genre | : Political Science |
ISBN | : |
The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant provides federal grants to states for a wide range of benefits, services, and activities. It is best known for helping states pay for cash welfare for needy families with children, but it funds a wide array of additional activities. TANF was created in the 1996 welfare reform law (P.L. 104-193). TANF funding and program authority were extended through FY2010 by the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA, P.L. 109-171). TANF provides a basic block grant of $16.5 billion to the 50 states and District of Columbia, and $0.1 billion to U.S. territories. Additionally, 17 states qualify for supplemental grants that total $319 million. TANF also requires states to contribute from their own funds at least $10.4 billion for benefits and services to needy families with children -- this is known as the maintenance-of-effort (MOE) requirement. States may use TANF and MOE funds in any manner "reasonably calculated" to achieve TANF's statutory purpose. This purpose is to increase state flexibility to achieve four goals: (1) provide assistance to needy families with children so that they can live in their own homes or the homes of relatives; (2) end dependence of needy parents on government benefits through work, job preparation, and marriage; (3) reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies; and (4) promote the formation and maintenance of two-parent families. Though TANF is a block grant, there are some strings attached to states' use of funds, particularly for families receiving "assistance" (essentially cash welfare). States must meet TANF work participation standards or be penalised by a reduction in their block grant. The law sets standards stipulating that at least 50% of all families and 90% of two-parent families must be participating, but these statutory standards are reduced for declines in the cash welfare caseload. (Some families are excluded from the participation rate calculation.) Activities creditable toward meeting these standards are focused on work or are intended to rapidly attach welfare recipients to the workforce; education and training is limited. Federal TANF funds may not be used for a family with an adult that has received assistance for 60 months. This is the five-year time limit on welfare receipt. However, up to 20% of the caseload may be extended beyond the five years for reason of "hardship", with hardship defined by the states. Additionally, states may use funds that they must spend to meet the TANF MOE to aid families beyond five years. TANF work participation rules and time limits do not apply to families receiving benefits and services not considered "assistance". Child care, transportation aid, state earned income tax credits for working families, activities to reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies, activities to promote marriage and two-parent families, and activities to help families that have experienced or are "at risk" of child abuse and neglect are examples of such "nonassistance".
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.
Author | : Steven Michael Teles |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 248 |
Release | : 1996 |
Genre | : Political Science |
ISBN | : |
Few American social programs have been more unpopular, controversial, or costly than Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Its budget, now in the tens of billions of dollars, has become a prominent target for welfare reformers and outraged citizens. Indeed, if public opinion ruled, AFDC would be discarded entirely and replaced with employment. Yet it persists. Steven Teles's provocative study reveals why and tells us what we should do about it. Teles argues that, over the last thirty years, political debate on AFDC has been dominated by an impasse created by what he calls "ideological dissensus"—an enduring conflict between opposing cultural elites that have largely disregarded public opinion. Thus, he contends, one must examine the origins and persistence of elite conflict in order to fully comprehend AFDC's immunity to the reform it truly needs-the kind that unites the elements of order, equality, and individualism central to the American creed. One of the first studies to analyze AFDC from a "New Democrat" position, Whose Welfare? sheds new light on the controversial role of the courts in AFDC, the rise of welfare waivers in the mid 1980s, the failure of the Clinton welfare plan, and the victory of block-granting over policy-oriented welfare reform. Teles, however, goes beyond mere critical analysis to advocate specific approaches to reform. His thoughtful call for compromise built around the centrality of work, individual responsibility, and opportunity offers a means for dissolving dissensus and genuine hope for changing an outdated and ineffectual welfare system. Based on interviews with participants in the AFDC policymaking process as well as an unparalleled synthesis of the voluminous AFDC literature, Whose Welfare? will appeal to a wide array of welfare scholars, policymakers, and citizens eager to better understand the tumultuous history of this problematic program and how it might fare in the wake of the fall elections.
Author | : National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine |
Publisher | : National Academies Press |
Total Pages | : 619 |
Release | : 2019-09-16 |
Genre | : Social Science |
ISBN | : 0309483980 |
The strengths and abilities children develop from infancy through adolescence are crucial for their physical, emotional, and cognitive growth, which in turn help them to achieve success in school and to become responsible, economically self-sufficient, and healthy adults. Capable, responsible, and healthy adults are clearly the foundation of a well-functioning and prosperous society, yet America's future is not as secure as it could be because millions of American children live in families with incomes below the poverty line. A wealth of evidence suggests that a lack of adequate economic resources for families with children compromises these children's ability to grow and achieve adult success, hurting them and the broader society. A Roadmap to Reducing Child Poverty reviews the research on linkages between child poverty and child well-being, and analyzes the poverty-reducing effects of major assistance programs directed at children and families. This report also provides policy and program recommendations for reducing the number of children living in poverty in the United States by half within 10 years.
Author | : National Bureau of Economic Research |
Publisher | : University of Chicago Press |
Total Pages | : 224 |
Release | : 2003-10-15 |
Genre | : Business & Economics |
ISBN | : 9780226533568 |
Few United States government programs are as controversial as those designed to aid the poor. From tax credits to medical assistance, aid to needy families is surrounded by debate—on what benefits should be offered, what forms they should take, and how they should be administered. The past few decades, in fact, have seen this debate lead to broad transformations of aid programs themselves, with Aid to Families with Dependent Children replaced by Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, the Earned Income Tax Credit growing from a minor program to one of the most important for low-income families, and Medicaid greatly expanding its eligibility. This volume provides a remarkable overview of how such programs actually work, offering an impressive wealth of information on the nation's nine largest "means-tested" programs—that is, those in which some test of income forms the basis for participation. For each program, contributors describe origins and goals, summarize policy histories and current rules, and discuss the recipient's characteristics as well as the different types of benefits they receive. Each chapter then provides an overview of scholarly research on each program, bringing together the results of the field's most rigorous statistical examinations. The result is a fascinating portrayal of the evolution and current state of means-tested programs, one that charts a number of shifts in emphasis—the decline of cash assistance, for instance, and the increasing emphasis on work. This exemplary portrait of the nation's safety net will be an invaluable reference for anyone interested in American social policy.
Author | : Kathryn Edin |
Publisher | : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
Total Pages | : 239 |
Release | : 2015 |
Genre | : Business & Economics |
ISBN | : 0544303180 |
The story of a kind of poverty in America so deep that we, as a country, don't even think exists--from a leading national poverty expert who "defies convention" (New York Times)
Author | : Mary Jo Bane |
Publisher | : Harvard University Press |
Total Pages | : 244 |
Release | : 1996 |
Genre | : Political Science |
ISBN | : 9780674949133 |
Mary Jo Bane and David T. Ellwood examine the welfare system - its recipients, its providers and the many policy ideas surrounding it. Focusing on the AFDC Programme (Aid to Families with Dependent Children), they identify three models that have been used to explain welfare dependency and test them against an accumulating body of evidence, offering suggestions for identifying potential long-term recipients so that resources can be targeted to encourage self-sufficiency. Finally, they review policy options.