How will we know if welfare reform is successful?

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Welfare Reform Indicators

In 1996, Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.  This legislation ended the program known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and replaced it with a program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Under TANF, welfare assistance is no longer an entitlement program.  Welfare benefits are time-limited and are closely tied to work requirements which are intended to move welfare recipients off welfare and into the labor force.

The Act came up for reauthorization in 2002, and was extended by Congress through a series of short-term extensions until re-enacted in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005, which was enacted in February 2006. There is an extensive literature dealing with reauthorization and the issues it evokes; for a start, see a special issue of Focus: Volume 22:1 (Summer 2002). Also see the joint publication of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Center for Law and Social Policy, Implementing the TANF Changes in the Deficit Reduction Act: "Win-Win" Solutions for Families and States (February 2007). A number of other Web sites are useful: the National Conference of State Legislatures' Welfare Reform Reauthorization page has a series of policy briefs, as does the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The Center for Law and Social Policy also has extensive analyzes of the provisions of proposed welfare legislation.

Ultimately, the success or failure of welfare reform will be assessed on empirical grounds, including changes in the size of welfare caseloads and the well-being of the families and children who have left the welfare system.

Some information on well-being may be available from data on wages, employment and income, housing and homelessness, and levels of child maltreatment and foster care placement. Three IRP Special Reports, Nos. 71, 72, and 73, discuss what kinds of indicators are likely to be most useful in assessing the effects of reform.

IRP has developed a brief guide to websites that monitor basic trends in poverty, welfare caseloads, and related issues and that can be used to assess the effects of welfare reform nationwide.  The Urban Institute, through its New Federalism project, is also making available much information about the effects of the new welfare regimes on families.  IRP researchers have studied welfare reform in Wisconsin. Other state programs are being evaluated both by the state agencies themselves, by private nongovernmental organizations, and by academic researchers. The Economic Success Clearinghouse (formerly the Welfare Information Network) is a useful guide to information on states and on particular initiatives.