How Has Welfare "Reform" Worked Out for Families in Poverty?

In 1996,the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant replaced the former Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program... 

• Over the last 15 years, the national TANF caseload has declined by 60 percent, even as poverty and deep poverty have worsened:
  
  

These opposing trends — TANF caseloads going down while poverty is going up — mean that a much smaller share of poor families receive cash assistance from TANF than they did prior to welfare reform:

TANF cash benefits have not kept pace with inflation and are below half the poverty line in all states:

TANF benefits are a fraction of the estimated costs of housing for a family, and housing is only one of the basic needs that a family has...

Standing On Shaky Ground

The recession of 2008 and early 2009 took an economic toll on 93 percent of American households, according to a new report from the Rockefeller Foundation and Yale University, the first to detail how economic insecurity affects the well-being of Americans.

The Worst of Times: Increase in Extreme Poverty from 2008-2009

A new Southern Foundation study, The Worst of Times: Extreme Poverty in the United States in 2009, reveals that:

• Americans living in extreme poverty (below 50 percent of the official poverty threshold) were the fastest growing income group in America last year.

• In 2009, 18.8 million people, including nearly 6.5 million children, were living in households with income below 50 percent of the poverty threshold.

• Half of the additional 2.1 million persons who fell into extreme poverty in 2009 resided in only seven states: Texas, California, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, New York, and Ohio.

• Between 2008-2009, the number of persons in extreme poverty in Ohio increased with an additional 87,420 people.

In the meantime, the Republican members of the House of Representatives have proposed cutting this fiscal year’s non-defense discretionary spending back to 2008 levels and also rescinding any unspent American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) money.

Rates of Poverty Growing Across the Nation

Also of note:

• The youth unemployment rate of summer 2009 was the highest on record.
• A record number (3.3 million) of job-seeking young people ages 16 to 24 are unemployed.