30 Years After Welfare Reform: Lessons for the Safety Net

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

Passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, aka Welfare Reform, is widely viewed as the most fundamental reform to the U.S. social safety net since the New Deal by its dismantling of the major cash entitlement program Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and replacement with the non-entitlement, state block grant program Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). The reform introduced requirements for work, time limits on benefit receipt, block granting of welfare funds to states, and mandates for state-level benchmarks, among many others. Thirty years later, TANF has generated a huge volume of research about its implementation and effects on child well-being, marriage and families, work and poverty, and state policy choices. This roundtable panel features leading welfare-reform experts from economics, political science, sociology, and program and policy administration to synthesize lessons about not only the effects of the TANF program itself, but also about the functioning and adequacy of the nation’s safety net. Topics to be addressed include, but are not limited to, the role the state block grant played in how families weathered economic turbulence over the past three decades from shocks such as the Great Recession and Covid-19 Pandemic; changes in the amount and types of work available for low-skill and low-wage workers; the effect of welfare reform on other safety net programs such as the EITC, SNAP, SSI, and housing; changes in family economic self sufficiency and well being; and new developments in the provision of social services across geographies from remote rural to dense urban centers. Discussion will also center on lessons from welfare reform on the recent expansion of work requirements and state responsibility for partial benefit payments in SNAP, the introduction of work requirements for the Medicaid population, and proposals to expand work requirements and time limits on federal housing programs.

Policy Area

• Poverty and Income Policy

Moderator

• James P. Ziliak, University of Kentucky

Organizer

• James P. Ziliak, University of Kentucky

Speakers

• Scott Allard, University of Washington

• Peggy Bailey, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

• Hilary W Hoynes, University of California, Berkeley

• Daniel Schneider, Harvard University