On Being

• Most importantly, the national "entitlement" to welfare (established by Roosevelt in the 30s) was rescinded. According to previous legislation, poor families with young children were entitled to benefits, that is, if you qualified you got benefits. During periods of recession when poverty increased, the welfare budget increased automatically to take care of the additional families entitled to welfare. Under the new law, however, the Federal block grants are essentially capped amounts that will not rise even with additional need.
• AFDC and several smaller programs were abolished and replaced with Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), a program comprising Federal block grants to the states and a set of broad guidelines about how that money could be used. While the recipient states must provide some form of welfare, there is great latitude in how that assistance may be provided. For instance, there is no requirement to give cash to recipients; the entire program could consist of vouchers or services. States would also be allowed to transfer up to 30% of the block funds into two other block grants. There was also latitude for changing the administration of the programs, for instance, through privatization. Instead of a single national AFDC program, there are now 51 separate TANF programs.
• Work requirements were mandated. Recipients would have to go to work, sometimes within two months of receiving aid. The numbers gradually increase over the life of the program so that by 2002 at 50% of any state's recipients will have to work at least 30 hours a week or Federal funds to the state will be cut.
• Time limitations were instituted. Getting recipients "off welfare" became a central goal of the program. The states would be penalized (through reductions in funding) if defined percentages of their welfare population were not off the roles within defined periods of time. Individual recipients could receive assistance for only five years during their lifetime. Federal money could not be used for additional support. The freedom that the states had under the broad guidelines of the legislation to individualize their programs did not extend to modification of this basic goal: to get people off welfare.
• Eligibility for Medicaid-a most important benefit-was not changed. Families who would have qualified for AFDC under pre-reform regulations may still receive Medicaid. Evaluating the impact of welfare reform has been hampered by at least four variables. The first is that there is no longer one program to evaluate but more than fifty. Some states have created programs that appear to be better than the previous ones; other states have allowed the programs to slide.

The second is that no comprehensive evaluation has been mandated. In fact, one response from several states to the concern that too many people are sliding off the rolls and into poverty has been to stop studying the issue.

The third is that the United States economy has enjoyed an uninterrupted boom since the passage of the act, and this prosperity has increased employment, slowed the growth of poverty (and more recently reduced the percentage of people living below the poverty level), and increased both state and local tax coffers. States thus have had less poverty and more tax money than is likely to be average over the next few years. Since the amounts of the block grants were based on states' needs during the base period 1992-95 (when needs were relatively greater), the states are now receiving proportionally more (in both tax revenue and block grants) per poor person than they will during more recessionary times. With more income and fewer recipients the states should be doing quite well. The real test is yet to come.

Fourth, many time limits (most importantly the five-year lifetime cap on benefits) have not yet kicked in. Few people have been forced out of the program as a result of using up all their time, so the deleterious effects of the time limits have yet to be felt.