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TANF Turns 10

In August 1996, President Clinton signed a law that has dramatically changed the welfare system. It replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) entitlement for low-income families with a flexible block grant for the states, known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The new law, often referred to as the TANF legislation, turns ten years old on August 22, 2006.

The enactment of the TANF law preceded by about a year the implementation of Wisconsin's welfare reform initiative, known as Wisconsin Works or W-2. However W-2 was actually enacted in March 2006, and that legislation helped serve as a model for many aspects of the TANF law.

In conjunction with the 10th anniversary of TANF, the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families (WCCF) has released a comprehensive paper examining the TANF spending choices that have been made in Wisconsin, and the processes used to divide funds between different program areas and to allocate those funds across different areas of the state. This paper, The Allocation of TANF and Child Care Funding in Wisconsin, is one of three state analyses of TANF spending recently published by The Brookings Institution, which has also prepared a synthesis of the three papers and the broader national trends in TANF spending. The links for the WCCF paper and the Brookings synthesis follow:

The Allocation of TANF and Child Care Funding in Wisconsin, by Jon Peacock, WCCF research director.

New Goals and Outcomes for Temporary Assistance: State Choices in the Decade After Enactment, by Margy Waller and Shawn Fremstad.

We have also prepared a number of shorter analyses for the TANF 10th anniversary. Many of these distill portions of the much longer WCCF/Brookings paper, and they incorporate the most recent available data. Those analyses can be found at the links below, and others will be released in the weeks following the TANF 10th anniversary.

TANF Turns Ten: Key Points from the WCCF Paper for the Brookings Institution

A W-2 Overview

Cash Caseload Trends

Other TANF-Supported Caseloads

Examining the Effects of the TANF and W-2 Laws

Current TANF and W-2 Related Appropriations

TANF Spending Shifts

Recent Cuts in TANF and W-2 Related Programs

Improving the Assessment of W-2 Performance

Upcoming papers include:

TANF Reauthorization: Challenges and Opportunities

Wisconsin's Commitment to Child Care for Low-income Workers

Recommendations for Improving W-2 and Work Supports

Resources on other websites include:

TANF at 10: Program Results are More Mixed Than Often Understood, by Sharon Parrott and Arloc Sherman, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

Ten Years after Welfare Reform, It's Time to Make Work Work for Families, by Evelyn Ganzglass, Center on Law and Social Policy