14.3 The Safety Net
Learning Objectives
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Identify the antipoverty government programs that comprise the safety net
- Explain the the safety net programs’ primary goals and how these programs have changed over time
- Discuss the complexities of these safety net programs and why they can be controversial
The U.S. government has implemented a number of programs to assist those below the poverty line and those who have incomes just above the poverty line, to whom we refer as the near-poor. Such programs are called the safety net, to recognize that they offer some protection for those who find themselves without jobs or income.
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
From the Great Depression until 1996, the United States’ most visible antipoverty program was Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), which provided cash payments to mothers with children who were below the poverty line. Many just called this program “welfare.” In 1996, Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, more commonly called the “welfare reform act.” The new law replaced AFDC with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
LINK IT UP
Welfare and Politics of Poverty addressing the major shift from AFDC to TANF. Watch this YouTube video created by the New York Times for more information on this issue.
TANF brought several dramatic changes in how welfare operated. Under the old AFDC program, states set the level of welfare benefits that they would pay to the poor, and the federal government guaranteed it would chip in some of the money as well. The federal government’s welfare spending would rise or fall depending on the number of poor people, and on how each state set its own welfare contribution.
Under TANF, however, the federal government gives a fixed amount of money to each state. The state can then use the money for almost any program with an antipoverty component: for example, the state might use the money to give cash to poor families, or to reduce teenage pregnancy, or even to raise the high school graduation rate. However, the federal government imposed two key requirements. First, if states are to keep receiving the TANF grants, they must impose work requirements so that most of those receiving TANF benefits are working (or attending school). Second, no one can receive TANF benefits with federal money for more than a total of five years over their lifetime. The old AFDC program had no such work requirements or time limits.
TANF attempts to avoid the poverty trap by requiring that welfare recipients work and by limiting the length of time they can receive benefits. In its first few years, the program was quite successful. The number of families receiving payments in 1995, the last year of AFDC, was 4.8 million. By 2012, according to the Congressional Research Service, the average number of families receiving payments under TANF