3
Introduction
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of
1996 (P.L. 104-193 enacted 22 August 1996, repealed Aid to Families with Dependent Children
(AFDC), Emergency Assistance for Needy Families, and Job Opportunities and Basic Skills
Training (JOBS) programs) established a work-oriented welfare system called Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). This legislation enables states to design programs to
provide families temporary financial assistance and move able-bodied adult recipients into the
workforce as quickly as possible. It was primarily designed for single women with dependent
children under the age of 18, and it is a fixed block grant program that combined funding from
three programs into a single block grant ($16.5 billion annually through fiscal year 2002). It also
provides an additional $2.3 billion annually to assist with childcare under a new childcare
development block grant. Essentially, the 1996 law ended a three-decade-old entitlement
program, granted states greater flexibility in designing welfare programs to meet the needs of its
constituents, while embedding certain core federal policy requirements into the statute.
Policy changes embedded into the law placed many restrictions upon welfare recipients
and the states by establishing ineligibility and work rules and placed strict time limits on cash
assistance. The main goal of TANF was to promote personal responsibility and a work ethic, and
to achieve these ends; the TANF work program used tough sanctions, “Work First Policies,” and
welfare avoidance (diversion) payments. These sanctions and policies resulted in significant
numbers of adult recipients leaving the welfare rolls. Many women gave up welfare for paying
jobs while others simply left the program. Employment among those receiving welfare also
increased, but during this time, we must also note that an increase in the share of child-only cases
(cases that are free of work and time limit rules) has been documented. In addition to policy
Convention