Who are “Deserving” Families? How TANF’s Normative Spending Priorities Reinforces Single-Mother Poverty

• In Event: Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 12. Families and Inequality

Abstract

While prior research has criticized Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) for its limited effectiveness in reducing poverty and its paternalistic design, its implicit and explicit promotion of a particular family form and its consequences for families experiencing poverty remain underexamined. This study draws on federal TANF and State Maintenance of Effort (MOE) expenditure data from 2010 to 2024, publicly available through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, combined with IPUMS data. Specifically, the study compares state-level allocations to basic assistance and to programs reflecting normative family ideology and examines how these spending priorities are associated with single-mother poverty rates at the state-level. Here, normative family spending captures state allocations of TANF block grant to programs promoting marriage, two-parent households, and responsible fatherhood, as distinct from direct cash assistance to families in need. This study addresses three research questions: (1) Are single-mother poverty rates higher in states that allocate a larger share of TANF funds to normative family programs? (2) Are single-mother poverty rates higher in states that allocate a smaller share of TANF funds to basic assistance? And (3) To what extent do these spending priorities jointly explain single-mother poverty disadvantage, net of other state-level factors? Preliminary results show that states allocating more TANF funds towards normative family spending tend to allocate less toward basic assistance. This paper argues that the U.S. welfare state is not merely a system that distributes assistance, but a regime that organizes public resources according to normative assumptions about which families embody the ideal citizen. These institutionalized ideals continue to marginalize single-mother households within contemporary poverty governance, structuring access to resources in ways that reinforce, rather than mitigate, their economic disadvantage.

Author

• Subin Min, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor