Looking Foward, Looking Back: Reflections on the 10th Anniversary of Welfare Reform
National Center for Children in Poverty:
As we approach the 10-year anniversary of the signing of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), commonly referred to as "welfare reform," pundits are rushing to declare the effort either an unqualified success or an utter disaster.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of the 1996 reform effort was the bipartisan consensus on work: the primary goal of the newly created Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program was to require adult recipients to work or prepare for work as a condition for receiving benefits.
Despite many disagreements about specifics (for now, I'm placing aside concerns about the newest federal requirements), these pale in comparison to the accomplishment of placing work at the center of temporary assistance policy.
This profound development rectified a fundamental flaw in the original federal welfare program, Aid to Dependent Children (ADC).
When the program was created in 1935 as part of the Social Security Act, most mothers were not employed.
By providing cash assistance, policymakers hoped to allow these single mothers to remain home to care for their children.
In short, the failed proposal linked the family's need for assistance to the absence of income from employment rather than to family structure.
The Old-Age Insurance program, commonly known as Social Security, added a survivor's benefit and eventually one for disability.
Given the vast amount of attention that policymakers and the media have devoted to welfare over the last 50 years, ordinary citizens can be forgiven for thinking that it's the nation's largest social program.
