Tough welfare limits; cash benefits worth less than in 1996

This really provides a lot of food for thought when people bemoan the welfare state & invoke the image of the welfare queen.

Excerpt from Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (read the whole thing here):

Cash assistance benefits for the nation's poorest families with children fell again in purchasing power in 2011 and are now at least 20 percent below their 1996 levels in 34 states, after adjusting for inflation.  While most states froze benefit levels in 2011, six states and the District of Columbia cut them, reducing assistance for more than 700,000 low-income families that represent over one-third of all low-income families receiving such assistance nationwide.[1]

The benefits are provided through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program which was established by the 1996 welfare law.  The data cited here are for state fiscal year 2011 (July 2010 to June 2011 in most states).  In all but two states, benefit levels are now below 1996 levels, after adjusting for inflation, and these declines came on top of even larger declines over the previous quarter century; between 1970 and 1996, cash assistance benefit levels for poor families with children fell by more than 40 percent in real terms in two-thirds of the states. 

Benefits fall below 50 percent of the poverty line in all states.  They fall below 30 percent of the poverty line in the majority of states.

A key goal of the 1996 welfare reform law that replaced the old Aid to Families with Dependent Children program (AFDC) with TANF was to place greater emphasis on work while continuing to provide a safety net to families with children that are unable to work because jobs are not available or they are addressing a personal or family crisis.  The program's effectiveness as a safety net depends on the extent to which very poor families are actually enrolled in it and on the level of benefits and the quality of employment and other services that they receive.  TANF has been performing inadequately on both of these dimensions for some time, but the situation has worsened during the recent economic downturn because of the combination of increased need and large state budget shortfalls. 

Between December 2007 and December 2009, state TANF caseloads increased by just 13 percent nationally, lagging far behind the increases in SNAP (food stamp) caseloads, the number of unemployed, and the number of people in families with children that live below the poverty line. [2]  Large numbers of families that qualify for TANF benefits to meet basic needs are not receiving them.  In 1996, for every 100 poor families with children, 68 received cash assistance through the AFDC program.  In 2009, for every 100 such families in poverty, only 27 received any cash assistance through TANF.  And for the shrunken group that does receive assistance, benefits ? which already were low when TANF was established and left families far below the poverty line ? are now considerably lower in real terms in most states and are continuing to decline in value year by year (see Appendices 1a and 3).

The New York Times had a story yesterday about Rhode Island residents maxing out their TANF.  I think it is worth noting the prevalence of young, single mothers.  (Cue Sisugal telling us the number 1 indicator of poverty is being a single mother.)  That brings up a whole host of questions: Where are the fathers? Are they paying support? Did these women have access to contraception? Are they from areas where young single motherhood is the cultural norm?  And, of course, what do we do to give these kids a fighting chance to break the cycle of poverty?