TANF at 10: as they reach their 10th anniversaries, state welfare programs have new challenges--keeping parents in jobs and meeting new federal rules.

• Author: Tweedie, Jack
• Position: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families

When clients arrived at welfare offices in Massachusetts, Michigan and Vermont on Sept. 30, 1996, they found a new program and the beginning of a new era in welfare. The next day, 13 other states converted their old Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). And over the next nine months, all 50 states and the District of Columbia changed over. Welfare has not been the same since.

FROM AFDC TO TANF

The federal government gave states moving from AFDC to TANF broad authority to design their own welfare-to-work programs. They had flexibility in using the TANF block grant, as long as they met the federal work mandates and complied with the five-year time limit on benefits.

Legislators and governors agreed that welfare families should be encouraged to find jobs and move toward self-sufficiency. There was less agreement, however, on how to accomplish this. "Work-first!" was the constant refrain.

Proponents argued that welfare parents should be expected to work. Requiring employment immediately would help them move into the workforce where they could learn new skills, increase their pay and build a career. Opponents were concerned that many families would not be able to cope and that parents who got entry-level jobs would get trapped there and not be able to support their families.

States faced huge challenges--how to increase work "participation" beyond what even the best welfare programs had been able to achieve and how to make welfare work on a fixed budget. Unlike in the AFDC program, states would not get more money if welfare rolls went up in an economic downturn.

Wisconsin developed Wisconsin Works (W-2) that mirrored the work world and was based on a ladder of activities to move parents toward full- time employment. Florida merged its welfare program with its workforce programs, creating Workforce Florida Inc., a $1 billion agency responsible for welfare-to-work and workforce development and training. Illinois emphasized education and training to help participants prepare for better jobs and excused families from time limits if they were working or making adequate progress in school.

THE GOOD YEARS

The surge of reforms produced astonishing results. And the timing was great. The reforms took place in the strongest American economy in generations. Caseloads dropped by more than 50 percent and most parents leaving welfare found jobs. Child poverty declined as well, from 20.5 percent in 1996 to 16.2 percent in 2000, rising back up to 17.8 percent in 2004. Poverty rates for African American and Hispanic children dropped even more sharply. Poverty for African-American children went from 39.9 percent in 1996 to 33.2 percent in 2004 while the number of poor Hispanic children fell from 40.3 percent to 28.9 percent.

States used TANF money for a variety of new and expanded services for low-income children and families: child care and...