Introduction

The welfare system in the United States was fundamentally altered in 1996 by the enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). The centrepiece of the 1996 ‘welfare reform’ law was a new block grant programme called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which replaced the cash assistance entitlement programme that had been in effect for over 60 years and explicitly gave welfare a time-limited and work-focused mission. In addition to reducing dependency on welfare by increasing and supporting employment, other key objectives of the welfare reform law were to encourage two-parent families and stem the growth in non-marital births. PRWORA is by no means the first time that policy-makers have sought to reform the US welfare system. Previous welfare reform efforts were shaped heavily by attempts to decrease poverty by increasing economic security for families while also reducing dependence on welfare. The most ambitious proposals to achieve this kind of comprehensive reform occurred in both the 1960s and 1970s but ultimately failed to be enacted. Meanwhile, widespread disenchantment with the welfare system, particularly with the cash assistance programme that primarily served poor single mothers with children, only deepened over time.

Whereas past large-scale structural reform failed, welfare reform efforts, focused on reducing welfare dependency by increasing recipients’ work efforts, have met with greater success. In the late 1960s, Congress created a federally funded, state-administered employment and training programme for welfare mothers with children under the age of six. Legislative changes made in 1981 allowed states greater flexibility to design and operate their welfare-to-work programmes. National welfare reform legislation, enacted in 1988, built on the experiences of these state-administered welfare-to-work programmes and expanded funding for them, focusing heavily on providing education to welfare recipients as a pathway to self-sufficiency.

In response to an economic recession and record high welfare caseloads in the early 1990s, states increasingly sought federal waivers to support further welfare reform experimentation beyond what was permitted under existing federal legislation. The state waivers spanned a broad range of initiatives, including policies designed to mandate greater participation among adult cash assistance recipients in work activities. By the time PRWROA was enacted under the Clinton administration, almost all states had received federal approval for at least one welfare reform waiver demonstration.