User:Svg1901/Welfare reform

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The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act was crafted as a response to the perceived failings of AFDC. Concerns about AFDC had started in the 1960s, at the same time when anti-poverty solutions and programs were being debated and created. Some of these concerns included that it: caused family dysfunction among the poor (especially among poor black families as a result of the Moynihan Report), discouraged marriage and promoted single-motherhood, and discouraged poor women from seeking employment by encouraging dependency on government aid. The 1980s concerns about the budget and spending on welfare also intensified with the growth of AFDC caseloads. Concerns about fraudulent welfare claims, dependency, and misuse by recipients created the stereotypical trope of the “welfare queen.” Between the late 1980s and early 1990s, growing public concern about out-of-wedlock births and teen pregnancy also fueled concern towards AFDC. Despite the public and political concerns, “sociologists, poverty analysts, and ethnographers have demonstrated that AFDC itself had little impact on women’s marital or childbearing decisions and the program acted for most recipients as a supplement to earnings or as a temporary source of support between periods of employment.”

In addition to public and political perception of welfare, also important to welfare reform is the drastic change in women’s labor market participation since ADC was first enacted. By the 1990s it was more common for women to engage in waged work, and this change contributed to the expectation that women receiving welfare should be required to do work outside the home. The economic and social context of the labor market had changed as well. Jobs that provided a steady and livable family wage had declined over the decades, the growth and expansion of the low-wage labor market had created jobs that provided little economic security or chance for upward economic mobility. The idea of the “work-first” approach to work requirements prioritized getting recipients to quickly enter the job market, with the work programs offered focusing on job readiness and immediate job placement at the first available job. These concerns about the women receiving AFDC and the impact of the program on marriage and motherhood, as well as the increased demand for low-wage, low-skilled workers in the job market and the expectation for women to participate in the labor-market provide the context for the 1996 welfare reform act.

The 1996 PRWORA ended AFDC and replaced it with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. The most significant change from AFDC to TANF is the end to an individual entitlement for poor families to receive federal aid. This signified that no one could “make a legally enforceable claim for assistance just because they were poor.”