Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF): Issues for the 110th Congress

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF):
th
Issues for the 110 Congress
Updated July 16, 2008
Gene Falk
Specialist in Social Policy
Domestic Social Policy Division



Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF):
Issues for the 110th Congress
Summary
Enactment of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA, P.L. 109-171) ended
more than four years of congressional debate on “reauthorizing” the block grant of
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The DRA extended funding for
most TANF grants through FY2010, except TANF supplemental grants that expire
at the end of this year (FY2008). Supplemental grants go to 17 states that have high
population growth or low historic funding in TANF’s predecessor programs per poor
person. H.R. 6331, a Medicare bill enacted over President Bush’s veto on July 15,

2008, extends supplemental grants for one year, through FY2009.


TANF is best known as the funding source for welfare benefits for low-income
families with children. In 2006, 1.9 million families per month received TANF cash
welfare, down from the historical high of five million families receiving cash welfare
in the mid-1990s. In 2006, less than three in ten poor children were in families that
received TANF cash welfare. However, TANF funds a wide range of “nonwelfare”
benefits and services for needy families with children. In FY2006, spending on
activities related to traditional cash welfare accounted for a little more than half of
total TANF funding, while other “nonwelfare” activities accounted for the remainder.
Though cash welfare is a shrinking part of what TANF funds, many of the issues
Congress might consider in the 110th Congress (beside supplemental grants) focus on
families receiving cash welfare, particularly the work participation standards that
apply to these families. The DRA made changes that require states to either increase
participation among families receiving cash welfare in work or job preparation
activities or reduce their welfare caseloads to meet these numerical performance
standards. The DRA also required the Department of Health and Human Services
(HHS) to issue rules regulations defining what specific activities count toward the
participation standards. HHS final regulations, published on February 5, 2008, allow
states to count participation in a four-year college degree program toward the
participation standards and provide for limited counting of rehabilitative activities.
However, the regulations also limit counting activities such as adult basic education
(ABE), pursuing a General Educational Development (GED) credential, and English
as a Second Language courses, generally requiring them to be counted only in
conjunction with activities more closely related to work.
In terms of “nonwelfare” spending from TANF, Congress might consider
proposals left over from TANF reauthorization proposals, but not included in DRA,
to loosen some rules for nonwelfare spending. Congress might also consider
improving the information available on how TANF funds are used for “nonwelfare”
benefits and services, since relatively little is known about this half of TANF
funding. Additionally, legislation that affects foster care, child welfare services for
abused and neglected children, and child care funding would have an effect on
TANF, since large amounts of TANF “nonwelfare” dollars are used to supplement
dedicated federal and state funding for these programs. This report will be updated
as legislative events warrant.



Contents
In troduction ......................................................1
Background and Context............................................2
The 109th Congress: The Deficit Reduction Act..........................5
Extension of Funding...........................................6
Work Participation Standards and Verifying Work Participation.........6
Revision to the Caseload Reduction Credit......................6
Counting Families in Separate State Programs...................7
Definitions of Work Activities and Work Verification.............7
Promoting Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood Initiatives.....8
Legislative Issues in the 110th Congress Related to TANF Funding...........8
Supplemental Grants...........................................8
TANF Recession Funds........................................10
Reserve Funds...........................................10
TANF Contingency Fund...................................10
TANF Loan Fund.........................................11
Potential Legislative Issues for the 110th Congress Related to Families
Receiving Welfare............................................11
Meeting TANF Work Participation Standards.......................12
Effective TANF Participation Standard with the Revised
Caseload Reduction Credit.............................13
Two-Parent Participation Standard...........................14
What Activities Count Toward the Participation Standards?.......16
Kinship Care................................................21
Child Support Pass-Through....................................22
Further Caseload Decline.......................................23
Potential Legislative Issues in the 110th Congress Related to “Nonwelfare”
TANF Benefits and Services....................................25
Allowing Carry-Over Funds to Be Spent on “Nonwelfare”
Benefits and Services......................................26
Treatment of Child Care and Transportation Aid....................26
Reporting on “Nonwelfare” Benefits and Services...................26
Oversight of Competitive Grants to Promote Healthy Marriages
and Responsible Fatherhood................................27
Child Care and Child Welfare Financing...........................28
Conclusion ......................................................28
Appendix A. Additional Tables.....................................30



List of Figures
Figure 1. Uses of TANF and MOE Funds in FY2006.....................5
Figure 2. TANF Cash Welfare Families, FY2006.......................13
Figure 3. Percent of TANF Adult and Teen Heads of Households
Without a High School Diploma or Equivalent, FY2006..............18
Figure 4. Barriers to Work Reported by Welfare Recipients
(Six-State Study).............................................20
Figure 5. Percentage Change in Families Receiving TANF/MOE
Cash Welfare: June to June of Each Year 1994-2007.................24
List of Tables
Table 1. Welfare Receipt, Economic, and Social Indicators for
Selected Years................................................3
Table 2. TANF Supplemental Grants..................................9
Table 3. TANF Work Participation Activities and Their Limitations........16
Table A1. TANF and MOE Funding Per Poor Child Per Year
(2006 Poverty Data)...........................................30
Table A2. TANF Work Participation Rates for FY2006, by State...........33
Table A3. TANF and MOE-Funded Cash Welfare Families,
by Family Type, FY2006.......................................35
Table A4. TANF and MOE-Funded Cash Welfare Families, by
Family Type, as a Percent of Total Cash Welfare Families,
FY2006 ....................................................37



Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
th
(TANF): Issues for the 110 Congress
Introduction
The block grant of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) is best
known as a funding source for cash welfare for low-income families with children.
However, the block grant also funds a wide range of benefits and services for
economically disadvantaged families. It also funds activities to help achieve the
goals of reducing out-of-wedlock pregnancies and raising children in two-parent
families.
TANF was created in the 1996 welfare reform law (P.L. 104-193), with the
funding originally slated to expire at the end of Fiscal Year (FY) 2002. Congress
debated reauthorization of the block grant during the 107th through the 109th1
Congresses. Comprehensive legislation to reauthorize and revise TANF did not
pass during this period, and the program operated on the basis of a series of2
temporary extensions. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA, P.L. 109-171)
included a slimmed down version of welfare reauthorization that
!extended TANF funding through FY2010, though TANF
“supplemental grants” (discussed below) were extended only
through FY2008;
!revised the work requirements that apply to welfare recipients; and
!established new funding for competitive grants to demonstrate
initiatives to promote healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood.
A decision on whether and how to extend TANF supplemental grants, which go
to 17 states in the South and West on the basis of low historic levels of welfare
funding and high population growth, beyond September 30, 2008, is the only “must-
do” task related to TANF in the 110th Congress. However, Congress might examine


1 For a discussion of the issues raised during the welfare reform debate, see CRS Report
RL33418, Welfare Reauthorization in the 109th Congress, An Overview, by Gene Falk,
Melinda Gish, and Carmen Solomon-Fears. This report discusses proposals that were
included in “comprehensive” welfare reauthorization proposals considered by Congress
during 2002 to 2005. “Comprehensive welfare reauthorization proposals” refers to bills that
either passed the House or were reported from the Senate Finance Committee. These billsthth
were H.R. 4737 in the 107 Congress; H.R. 4 in the 108 Congress; and the House-passedth
version of S. 1932 in the 109 Congress.
2 For a listing of the temporary extensions, see CRS Report RL32760, The Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families Program: Responses to Frequently Asked Questions, by Gene
Falk, Table A1.

the impact of DRA’s provisions related to TANF work participation standards for
welfare recipients. Additionally, in light of renewed interest in issues related to
poverty and disadvantaged families with children, interest might be raised in the
flexibility states have to use TANF funds for a wide range of “non-welfare”
activities.
Use of the Term “Welfare” in This Report
This report makes a distinction between “welfare” and “nonwelfare” spending within
TANF. The purpose of this distinction is to emphasize that TANF funds a wide range
of activities that go well beyond what is traditionally thought of as “welfare” and
related administrative and work program costs.
In this report, the nontechnical term “TANF welfare” is used to denote what is
technically referred to within TANF as “assistance.” TANF’s implementing
regulations define “assistance” as payments to families to meet ongoing basic needs,
such as food, clothing, shelter, utilities, household goods, and other personal
expenses. This generally conforms to what most people call “welfare.” There are
broader uses of the term “welfare,” which may include most benefits and services paid
on the basis of financial need. However, in this report, the term welfare is used in a
narrow sense.
“Nonwelfare” is used to describe activities such as TANF-funded work supports, such
as child care and transportation aid; TANF-funded refundable tax credits; and TANF
activities related to family formation issues. In technical terms (from TANF’s
implementing regulations), these types of activities are given the label of
“nonassistance.”
Background and Context
TANF is the block grant created in the 1996 welfare reform law that replaced
the New Deal program of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). AFDC
provided monthly cash welfare benefits to needy families with children, with most
of these families headed by single mothers. Concerns that AFDC helped create
disadvantage by discouraging work and breaking up families dominated welfare
reform debates from 1970 onward, culminating in the 1996 welfare reform law.3
Some of the most visible policies of the 1996 welfare reform law are TANF work
requirements for welfare recipients, time limits on the receipt of welfare, and the end
of a federal entitlement to welfare for needy families with children.


3 A large body of literature that attempted to empirically estimate the impact of welfare on
work effort and family structure developed prior to the 1990s. This literature is reviewed
in Moffitt, Robert, “Incentive Effects of the U.S. Welfare System,” Journal of Economic
Literature, Vol. 20, No. 1 (March 1992), pp. 1-61. The literature review concluded that the
available empirical evidence at the time showed that welfare reduced labor supply (work
effort) and “weakly” affected family structure. However, the magnitude of these effects
indicated that the effect of welfare was not large enough to fully explain the trends in work
effort for single mothers or family structure.

The monthly TANF cash welfare benefit, like the monthly AFDC benefit before
it, is determined by the states, and benefit amounts vary widely among the states. In
January 2005, the monthly cash benefit in California was $723 for a family of three.4
The California benefit amount is high relative to many other states, though even that
benefit is only a fraction (54%) of poverty-level income. In Alabama, a family of
three received $215 per month (16% of poverty-level income).
Table 1 shows selected economic and social indicators for 1995, 2000, and
2006. As shown, the cash welfare caseload plummeted from nearly 5 million to 1.9
million families over this period. Most of that caseload decline occurred from 1995
to 2000, though recently the cash welfare caseload has fallen again. The number of
children in families receiving cash welfare fell from 9.1 million to 3.5 million from

1995 to 2006. Work among single mothers (who head most welfare families)


increased from 1995 to 2000, with some slippage in the 2000-2006 period. However,
despite the decline in receipt of cash welfare and increase in work among single
mothers, improvements in other social and economic indicators have been less
dramatic. The child poverty rate did fall from 1995 to 2000, but the 2006 rate of
17.4% is higher than in 2000. There remained 12.8 million children living in
families with incomes below the poverty threshold in 2006. Further, the percentage
of babies born out-of-wedlock in 2006 was 38.9% — an all-time high.
Table 1. Welfare Receipt, Economic, and
Social Indicators for Selected Years
199520002006
Cash welfare caseload (monthly average,4.82.31.9
millions of families)
Number of children in families receiving9.14.53.5
cash welfare (monthly average, millions)
Child poverty rate20.8%16.2%17.4%
Number of poor children (millions)14.711.612.8
Ratio of children in families receiving61.5%38.1%26.7%
cash welfare to all poor childrena
(expressed as a percent)
Employment rate for single mothers64.0%75.5%72.0%
Out-of-wedlock birth ratio32.2%33.2%38.9%
Source: Congressional Research Service (CRS) based on data from the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services, U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and National Center for
Health Statistics.
a. This is the average monthly number of child cash welfare recipients in TANF and MOE programs
in the 50 states and District of Columbia divided by the total number of poor persons under age
18 for the year.


4 For more detail on cash welfare benefit amounts under TANF see CRS Report RL32760,
The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Block Grant: Responses to Frequently Asked
Questions, by Gene Falk.

Cash welfare reaches far fewer disadvantaged children than it did prior to
welfare reform. The ratio of the average monthly number of children in families
receiving cash welfare to the total number of children in poverty declined from about
six out of ten in 1995 to less than three out of ten in 2006.
TANF is not just a welfare program. The 1996 law granted states permission
to use funds for a wide range of benefits, services, and activities to address some of
the social and economic ills afflicting disadvantaged families with children. States
may use their funds in any manner “reasonably calculated” to further TANF’s
purpose, which is to provide states with the flexibility to achieve four goals set in
statute:
(1) provide assistance to needy families so that children may live in their
own homes or in the homes of relatives;
(2) end dependence of needy parents on government benefits by promoting
work, job preparation, and marriage;
(3) reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies; and
(4) promote the formation and maintenance of two-parent families.
Given the fixed funding of the TANF block grant, states are able to use the
savings from the welfare caseload decline to fund other “nonwelfare” benefits,
services, and activities. Total funding in the TANF “system” comprises both the
federal block grant to states and a state’s own funds spent to meet a maintenance of
effort (MOE) requirement. Figure 1 shows the uses of TANF and MOE funds in
FY2006. It shows that the categories typically associated with a traditional cash
welfare program — cash benefits, administrative costs, and work activities —
accounted for only a little more than half of total TANF funds. Thus, TANF has the
potential to make an impact on disadvantaged families with children through both its
“nonwelfare” benefits, services, and activities, as well as its “welfare” component.



Figure 1. Uses of TANF and MOE Funds in FY2006


Source: Figure prepared by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) based on data from the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Note: SSBG means the Social Services Block Grant, Title XX of the Social Security Act. CCDF
means the Child Care and Development Fund.
The 109th Congress: The Deficit Reduction Act
Enactment of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA, P.L. 109-171) ended
more than four years of congressional debate on “reauthorizing” the TANF block
grant. Over the 2002 to 2005 period, Congress passed twelve temporary extensions
of the program while more comprehensive reauthorization bills remained pending.
The DRA included a slimmed down version of reauthorization, extending TANF
funding and making some limited policy changes.5 Many of the policy changes
5 The DRA was a budget reconciliation bill. A budget reconciliation bill is considered on
a legislative “fast-track” in the Senate, in that consideration is time-limited and cannot be
delayed by a filibuster. A Senate rule known as the “Byrd Rule” (after West Virginia
Senator Robert Byrd) provides that a Senator can raise a point of order on a reconciliation
bill provision that makes a policy change that has no budgetary impact. To overcome such
(continued...)

proposed in the reauthorization bills considered from 2002 to 2005 were not included
in the DRA, and some of those changes may be revived for legislation in the 110th
Congress. Additionally, DRA’s changes to the TANF work participation standards
have met with some criticism that also might spur proposals in this Congress.
This section provides a brief summary of the DRA provisions affecting TANF.
For more detail, please see CRS Report RS22369, TANF, Child Care, Marriage
Promotion, and Responsible Fatherhood Provisions of the Deficit Reduction Act, by
Gene Falk.
Extension of Funding
The DRA extended most TANF funding through FY2010. However, TANF
supplemental grants (discussed in some detail below) were extended only through
FY2008. Therefore, the 110th Congress may consider whether to further extend these
grants. Additionally, the DRA eliminated two TANF bonus funds: the first bonus
($200 million per year) was for states that achieved high performance on measures
relating to achieving TANF goals; the second ($100 million per year) was for states
that reduced out-of-wedlock birth ratios without increasing abortions.
Work Participation Standards and
Verifying Work Participation
The 1996 welfare reform law established work participation standards for a
state’s welfare caseload. States that fail these participation standards could be
financially penalized by a reduction in their block grants. The TANF work
participation standards are numerical standards computed in the aggregate for a
state’s cash welfare caseload. The participation standards are
!50% for all families; and
!90% for the two-parent portion of its cash welfare caseload.
These standards may be met either by engaging welfare adult and teen parents in
specified work and job preparation activities or through reductions in the TANF cash
welfare caseload.
Revision to the Caseload Reduction Credit. The 1996 welfare reform
law provided states with credit for caseload reduction that occurred from FY1995.
The caseload reduction credit provided a state with a one percentage point reduction
in its participation standards for each percent decline in its TANF cash welfare
caseload from FY1995. The large caseload declines that occurred subsequent to


5 (...continued)
a point of order, 60 votes are needed or the provision is stricken from the bill. Many
provisions in the comprehensive welfare reauthorization bills that changed policy but had
no estimated budgetary impact were not included in the final version of the DRA. For more
information on the “Byrd Rule,” see CRS Report RL30862, The Budget Reconciliation
Process: The Senate’s “Byrd Rule,” by Robert Keith.

FY1995 meant that most states had large reductions in the standards they were
required to meet; for many states, the effective (after credit) participation standard
was reduced to 0%.
The DRA revised the caseload reduction credit, so that states will receive credit
only for future welfare caseload reduction. Beginning in FY2007, states receive
credit for caseload reductions measured from FY2005 forward. The effect of this
change is much smaller caseload reduction credits for FY2007 and higher effective
(after credit) participation standards. Like the prior law caseload reduction credit,
states are not given credit for caseload declines estimated to come from policy
changes that restrict eligibility for welfare benefits.
Counting Families in Separate State Programs. Under the 1996 welfare
reform law, states could provide welfare to families using state MOE funds and not
count those families when determining whether the state met its work participation
standard. States could designate families receiving welfare from MOE funds as
being assisted by “separate state programs” outside of the TANF program. This
effectively exempted the family from TANF’s work participation standards. The
most common use of separate state programs was to house a state’s two-parent
welfare caseload and avoid the 90% participation standard, but states also used
separate state programs for other populations such as college students and the
disabled.
The DRA requires, beginning in FY2007, that states count families receiving
cash welfare in separate state programs when determining work participation rates.
This effectively ends the exemption from TANF work participation standards for
families placed in separate state programs.
Definitions of Work Activities and Work Verification. Before the DRA,
the operational details of state work programs were generally left to the states.
Federal law lists 12 categories of activities that count toward the participation
standards, but regulations promulgated during the Clinton Administration from the
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) explicitly allowed states to define
the specific activities counted in these categories. HHS also left to states how work
participation would be verified (i.e., how to determine whether a recipient scheduled
to be in an activity actually performed that activity).
The Government Accountability Office (GAO), in a 2005 report, found that the
lack of further definition for what counts as work led to a wide-range of state
practices, particularly with respect to education and rehabilitative activities.6 GAO
concluded that this led to an “inconsistent” measurement of work across states and
recommended that HHS regulate what counts as work. The DRA required HHS to
issue regulations providing a consistent definition of work activities and describing
procedures for states to verify work activity. These regulations were issued in
interim form on June 29, 2006, then revised and published in final form on February


6 U.S. Government Accountability Office. Welfare Reform: HHS Should Exercise Oversight
to Help Ensure TANF Work Participation is Measured Consistently Across States. GAO-05-

821. August 2005.



8, 2008. The major issues raised by those regulations are discussed below. See
“What Activities Count Toward the Participation Standards?” section later in this
report.7
Promoting Healthy Marriage and
Responsible Fatherhood Initiatives
The DRA established within TANF new competitive grants totaling $150
million per year for research and demonstration projects to promote “healthy”
marriages and responsible fatherhood. The marriage promotion grants are generally
for nonwelfare services (and not necessarily restricted to low-income families) such
as advertising campaigns, education in high schools on the value of marriage, and
education in “social skills.” The “responsible fatherhood” grants attempt to reach
noncustodial parents with education in “social skills” as well as job training.
Legislative Issues in the 110th Congress
Related to TANF Funding
The DRA extended the bulk of federal TANF and MOE funding through
FY2010. However, DRA continued supplemental grants only through FY2008,
making a decision on their extension beyond then the business of the 110th Congress.
Unless Congress acts to extend supplemental grants, the FY2009 TANF grant
awards, beginning October 1, 2008, would be reduced for the 17 states that receiveth
supplemental grants. In light of the potential for an economic slump, 110 Congress
might also review TANF’s contingency provisions for financing unanticipated
spending increases because of a recession.
Supplemental Grants
The bulk of federal funding for TANF is in a fixed basic block grant, with its
amount determined by the amount of funding a state received under pre-1996 welfare
and related programs. All state funding, under the TANF MOE, is also determined
by the historical level of welfare spending by the state. Each state’s basic grant and
MOE levels has been frozen since FY1997: it is neither adjusted for inflation nor for
changing circumstances (population or TANF cash welfare caseload). Thus, TANF
funding rules have effectively “locked- in” historical levels of funding, which
reflected the pre-1996 welfare policies of states.
During the welfare reform debate of the mid-1990s, concerns were raised that
the fixed funding based on historical spending patterns disadvantaged two sets of
states: (1) those that paid relatively low welfare benefits and consequently had low
federal grants relative to poverty in the state; and (2) high population growth states.


7 For a detailed discussion of the differences between the interim and final regulations, see
CRS memorandum TANF Work Participation Regulations, by Gene Falk. Available upon
request.

The supplemental grants were added to TANF to target additional funds to such
states.
Seventeen states qualify for supplemental grants. From FY1998 through
FY2001, supplemental grants grew each year until they reached $319 million. They
have been frozen at that level since. The DRA extended supplemental grants at $319
million per year until the end of FY2008. Table 2 shows the 17 states that receive
supplemental grants and the grant amount. The table shows the amount of TANF
funding each of these states would lose if Congress does not extend supplemental
grants beyond FY2008.
Table 2. TANF Supplemental Grants
($ in millions)
StateSupplemental Grant
Alabama11.093
Alaska6.888
Arizona23.925
Arkansas6.218
Colorado13.570
Florida60.406
Georgia37.283
Idaho3.498
Louisiana17.027
Mississippi 9.036
Montana1.133
Nevada3.734
New Mexico6.553
North Carolina36.110
Tennessee21.565
Texas52.708
Utah8.704
Totals319.450
Source: Congressional Research Service (CRS) based on data from
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Supplemental grants, at $319 million per year, have only a small impact on the
pattern of welfare funding relative to the number of poor children in a state.
Appendix Table A1 ranks states by TANF and MOE funding per poor child per year.
Total basic block grant plus MOE funding per poor child per year ranges from a low
of $480 in Arkansas to a high of over $5,000 in Hawaii. Supplemental grants bring
up funding for some states with low funding per poor child. For example, the $480
in basic funding per poor child per year in Arkansas is 23% of the national average.
The Arkansas supplemental grant adds $38 per year per poor child, raising its funding
to $518 per year per poor child. The $518 is 25% of the national average.
Additionally, not all states with low levels of funding per poor child receive



supplemental grants; some were excluded because their population growth was less
than the national average.
A one-year extension of supplemental grants through FY2009 is included in
H.R. 6331, a Medicare bill. President Bush vetoed the bill (because of certain
Medicare provisions), but Congress overrode the veto on July 15, 2008. Extension
of supplemental grants through FY2010, when other TANF grants expire, will
require further action by Congress.
Earlier in 2008, Senator Rockefeller introduced S. 2820, which would both
extend and expand supplemental grants. S. 2820 would fund supplemental grants
through FY2010 and provide additional grants for all states with below average total
federal and state TANF resources per poor child.
TANF Recession Funds
TANF’s fixed block grant led to concerns that funding might be insufficient in
the event of a recession. Therefore, the 1996 welfare reform law included three
provisions intended to allow states to supplement their annual block grant in the case
of a recession. A state may
!reserve or “save” funds during periods of economic growth to be
used to pay for any increased costs associated with a recession;
!draw from a “contingency fund,” if it meets criteria of economic
need, expends extra state funds to reach a level of 100% of FY1994
state spending, and also expends extra state funds to match federal
contingency funds; and
!obtain interest-bearing loans from the federal government that would
have to be repaid.
TANF was only tested by one recession — the relatively shallow 2001
recession. However, during and after that recession, employment among single
mothers slumped some and child poverty increased. On a national level, the cash
welfare caseload did not respond as it remained relatively constant during the period

2001 to 2004 when child poverty increased.


Reserve Funds. Unspent TANF funds have sometimes been seen not as
“reserves” to save in the case of a recession but as an indicator of lack of need. The
Bush Administration’s 2002 welfare reauthorization proposal and all except one of
the comprehensive reauthorization bills considered during 2002-2005 allowed states
to designate either some or all of their unspent monies as “contingency” reserve
funds.
TANF Contingency Fund. No state drew funds from the TANF contingency
fund during or immediately after the 2001 recession. There were two major reasons
states failed to draw down contingency funds during a recession. First, states would
have had to increase spending from their own funds before they could qualify for the
first matching contingency dollar. Second, many states failed to meet the criteria of
economic need based on high and increasing unemployment rates and food stamp
caseloads during the recession.



Ironically, a few states drew upon contingency funds in 2005 and 20068 — well
after the 2001 recession had ended. They qualified based on high food stamp
caseloads. The 1996 law provided that a state would be considered economically
needy for contingency funds if a state’s food stamp caseload was 10% higher than its
adjusted caseload during the corresponding period in FY1994 or FY1995. (FY1994
and FY1995 are adjusted downward for immigrants made ineligible for food stamps
by the 1996 welfare reform law.) Food stamp caseloads, unlike cash welfare
caseloads, did increase with the 2001 recession and have remained historically high.
The food stamp contingency fund trigger is also expressed in terms of number of
participants, rather than a rate of receipt, in a state. Population growth over the 12-
or 13-year period means that the number of participants in a state can be higher than
in the base years, even if the rate at which people in the state receive food stamps
declined.
The 2002 Bush Administration welfare reauthorization proposal and all
comprehensive reauthorization bills considered during the 2002-2005 period would
have made some changes to the contingency fund. Reauthorization proposals
emanating from the Senate Finance Committee would have made more far-reaching
changes to the contingency fund. They would have eliminated matching
requirements and made the unemployment and food stamp criteria for qualifying for
contingency funds more sensitive to recent economic changes.
TANF Loan Fund. TANF includes a loan fund, so that states running short
of TANF grants could borrow funds from the federal government. These loans
would have to be repaid with interest. Aside from loans to states affected by
Hurricane Katrina that were forgiven, no state has drawn a loan from the fund. The
Bush Administration’s 2002 welfare reauthorization proposal and all comprehensive
reauthorization proposals considered during 2002-2005 would have eliminated the
loan fund. However, DRA extended the TANF loan fund through FY2010.
Potential Legislative Issues for the 110th Congress
Related to Families Receiving Welfare
Though “welfare” now accounts for only a little more than half of all TANF andth
MOE funding, most issues the 110 Congress might consider, other than financing
issues, relate to families receiving welfare. Specifically, these issues relate to the
law’s requirement that a specified percentage of cash welfare families in each state
participate in work or related activities. DRA’s changes to the caseload reduction
credit require states to either: (1) raise the share of families on the welfare roles
working or engaged in job preparation activities or (2) reduce the cash welfare
caseload. Although much attention has been paid to the required increase in
participation standards and the impact of DRA-required regulations specifying the
operational details of state work programs, the cash welfare caseload has been


8 This is in addition to funds drawn from the contingency fund in FY2005 and FY2006 to
aid evacuee victims of Hurricane Katrina under P.L. 109-68.

declining at an accelerating rate. Over the most recent 12-month period for which
data are available, the TANF/MOE cash welfare caseload declined by 10%.
Meeting TANF Work Participation Standards
The change in the caseload reduction credit — beginning in FY2007, providing
credit only for caseload reduction from FY2005 — means that many states had to
either quickly raise participation in activities or reduce their caseloads to meet
TANF’s work participation standards. Simultaneously, states had to adjust to new
rules, in the form of regulations from HHS required by the DRA, for what specific
activities count toward the participation standards and how participation is
supervised and verified.
However, a couple of points might help put issues regarding TANF work
participation standards in perspective. First, although the TANF work participation
standard rules undoubtedly influence the design of state work requirements, states
themselves still determine the requirements that apply to individuals. States are free
to determine that some families may be exempt from participating and can determine
that some individuals in these families may participate in activities that are not
countable toward the federal standards.
Second, these TANF work participation rules affect a relatively small number
of families each month. As discussed above, while cash welfare caseloads have
declined markedly, within the cash welfare caseload the number of families with an
adult recipient who is not employed has declined even faster. (Families with a non-
employed adult recipient have been the focus of most welfare-to-work efforts.)
Figure 2 shows the composition of the cash welfare caseload in FY2006.
Child-only cases are families receiving cash welfare where the adults caring for the
children are not receiving benefits on their own behalf. They comprised 43% of all
cash welfare families in FY2006, totaling about 830,000 families per month. These
families have been excluded from TANF’s work participation standards.
Additionally, about 8% of families were single-parent families caring for an infant
(153,000 families per month), who may be exempted and excluded from work
participation standards. An additional 13% of all cash welfare families (259,000)
already had an employed member. Therefore, the focus of much of the work rules
is the remaining 36% of families (713,000 families per month) with an adult recipient
who is not employed.
This is not to say that TANF work rules are unimportant. TANF cash welfare
is received by the most disadvantaged of poor families with children, and
policymakers remain concerned about finding effective strategies to help adults in
these families move from welfare to self-sufficiency . As indicated above, the rules
are likely to influence state policies concerning how this very disadvantaged group
is served.



Figure 2. TANF Cash Welfare Families,
FY2006


Source: Congressional Research Service (CRS) analysis of the FY2006 TANF National Data Files.
Note: Child-only families” with an adult subject to sanction are considered other families with an
adult” for the purposes of this chart.
Effective TANF Participation Standard with the Revised Caseload
Reduction Credit. FY2006 was the last year states received credit for caseload
reduction from FY1995. In that year, the caseload reduction credit reduced the
statutory 50% TANF work participation standard to below 20% in 47 states, among
them 0% in 19 states.
Beginning in FY2007 states are given credit only for caseload reduction from
FY2005. Based on caseload data for FY2005 through FY2006, most states are likely
to receive a caseload reduction credit against their FY2007 participation standard.
The national average decline for FY2005 to FY2006 in the cash welfare caseload was
6%. Actual caseload reduction credits might be higher or lower: states are not given
credit for caseload reduction that results from restricting eligibility, but might get
additional credit if the state is aiding cases using state dollars in excess of the TANF
MOE.9 Assuming that the average state receives a credit equal to the caseload
decline, the national average effective all-family participation standard would be 44%
for FY2007. (The two-parent standard is discussed below.) This is substantially
9 Under existing regulations, for purposes of the caseload reduction credit, the FY2006
caseload may be reduced pro-rata for states that spend more of their own funds toward the
TANF MOE. That is, the state only needs to count the caseload that is aided by required
state spending under the TANF MOE.

higher than the national average participation rate states officially achieved in
FY2006 of 32%. (See Appendix Table A2 for FY2006 official work participation
rates by state.)
States that fail to meet TANF work participation standards may be penalized by
up to a 5% reduction in their block grant for the first year of noncompliance, though
the penalty is reduced by the “degree” of noncompliance. Penalties increase for each
subsequent year that a state fails to meet the standards. However, states can either
avoid or delay the penalty for failing to meet the FY2007 participation standard by
either entering into a corrective compliance plan or claiming reasonable cause. HHS
has already publically announced that it would consider requests to avoid the penalty
based on reasonable cause if a state’s legislature had not met in time to enact program10
changes needed to meet the FY2007 requirement. S. 1461 (Rockefeller) would
prohibit HHS from penalizing a state for failing to meet participation standards for
the period of time (FY2007) while HHS and the state is negotiating its work
verification plan and for one year thereafter.
Two-Parent Participation Standard. President Bush’s FY2009 budget
proposal would eliminate the higher, 90% work participation standards required of
two-parent welfare families. All welfare reauthorization proposals that received
action in 2002 through 2005 sought to eliminate the separate standard,11 except the
slimmed down version of welfare reauthorization included in the conference report
on the DRA. In the 110th Congress, H.R. 3188 (Weller) would eliminate the two-
parent standard. Additionally, the elimination of the two-parent standard is included
in broader “responsible fatherhood” legislation proposed in H.R. 3395 (Davis-Il) and
S. 1626 (Bayh).
The higher participation standard for two-parent families on welfare dates back
to pre-TANF policies under the Family Support Act of 1988. That act first required
states to provide welfare for two-parent families; before then it was optional. The
Family Support Act also established participation standards in the pre-1996
education, employment, and training program for welfare families. Higher
participation standards and stricter work requirements for two-parent families
responded to criticisms that extending welfare to two-parent families without work
could promote more welfare dependency.12
The two-parent component of the cash welfare caseload remained relatively
small even after the 1988 expansions and subsequently after states liberalized
eligibility for two-parent families under TANF. In FY2006, the two-parent caseload


10 See Hearing to assess impact of recent changes in programs assisting low-income
families. Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support of the Committee on Ways
and Means, U.S. House of Representatives. March 6, 2007. Hearing transcript available
at [http://waysandmeans.house.gov].
11 S. 667, reported from the Senate Finance Committee in 2005, would have eliminated the

90% standard but retained higher hours requirements for two-parent families.


12 For an overview of the debate on the Family Support Act, see “After Years of Debate,
Welfare Reform Clears,” 1988 CQ Almanac, Washington, Congressional Quarterly. p. 349-

364.



averaged 98,000 families per month, or 5% of the total cash welfare caseload. (There
is a great deal of variation across states in the share of the cash welfare caseload that
consists of two-parent families. See Appendix Tables A3 and A4 for a state-by-state
breakdown of the two-parent caseload versus the one-parent and no-parent caseload
in FY2006.)
Though the number of two-parent families on cash welfare has remained small,
work participation rates for this category of families never reached the high levels
envisioned either under the Family Support Act or TANF. In FY2005, the national
work participation rate for two-parent families in both TANF and separate state
programs was 36% — only a few percentage points higher than the all families work
participation rate of 32%. (FY2005 is the last year for which this comparison is13
available.)
As previously noted, many states avoided having to meet the 90% two-parent
standard by placing the two-parent component of their caseload in separate state
programs. In FY2006 (the latest year for which official TANF work participation
data are available), 19 states had all of their two-parent cash welfare families in
separate state programs. Other states generally met the standard, in part, through
caseload reduction measured from FY1995. (Arkansas and the District of Columbia
failed the two-parent standard.) The combination of the two DRA changes —
counting families in separate state programs and providing a credit for welfare
caseload declines only from FY2005 — means that many states are in jeopardy of
failing the two-parent standard.
Failure to meet the two-parent participation standard by itself is likely to result
in a fairly small penalty to the states. Under HHS regulations, the maximum penalty
for failure to meet the two-parent participation standard would be pro-rated based on
the share of the cash welfare caseload that consists of two-parent families. However,
this would not be the case if a state failed both the all-family and two-parent
participation standards. The rules penalize a state more heavily if they fail both
standards than if they fail one of the two standards.14
Additionally, the high two-parent participation standard potentially encourages
states to calculate ways to “game” TANF rules. Through June 2007, 12 states had
dropped serving two-parent families with TANF or MOE funds. States are no longer
reporting information on these families, though states may have shifted to serving
these families with state-only funds outside of the TANF-MOE system.


13 The FY2005 participation rate estimates discussed in this report represent CRS estimates
of participation rates in both TANF and State Maintenance of Effort, Separate State
Programs (MOE-SSP programs). The estimates do not reflect DRA rule changes, as data
for FY2005 are insufficient to fully estimate how changes such as including certain child-
only families in the participation rate and changes in the definition of work activities will
affect the participation rate. HHS did estimate the effect of some of these changes using
FY2005 data and estimated a national average participation rate of 31% — very similar to
this report’s 32%.
14 See regulations at 45 C.F.R. 261.51.

What Activities Count Toward the Participation Standards? Federal
law lists 12 categories of activities that count toward TANF work participation
standards. Table 3 lists these 12 categories and any statutory limitation that might
apply to counting participation in these categories. The statutory list influences the
content of state work programs for cash welfare recipients, since these are the
categories of activities that count toward meeting the numerical performance
standards states must meet or risk being penalized.
Table 3. TANF Work Participation Activities
and Their Limitations
ActivityStatutory Limitations
Unsubsidized employment
Subsidized private sector employment
Subsidized public sector employment
Work experience
On-the-job training
Job search and readiness Limited to 6 weeks in a fiscal year, 12 weeks
under some circumstances. Only four
consecutive weeks may be counted.
Community service programs
Vocational educational trainingLimited to 12 months in a lifetime. Only 30%
of those engaged in work may be counted as
participating through either vocational
educational training or teen parents deemed
engaged in work through education.
Job skills training directly related toUsually countable only in conjunction with
employmentwork.
Education directly related toUsually countable only in conjunction with
employmentwork and only for those who do not have a
high school degree
Satisfactory attendance at secondaryUsually countable only in conjunction with
school or in a course of study leadingwork and only for those who do not have a
to a certificate of general equivalencehigh school degree.
Provision of child care services to an
individual participating in a
community service program
Source: Congressional Research Service.
The federal participation standards reflect a “work-first” approach, which
emphasizes job seeking and relatively rapid attachment to either a job or an activity
to work off welfare benefits. All pre-employment activities are subject to limits. Job
search and readiness is usually limited to six weeks in a year (12 weeks under certain
circumstances). Education and training are subject to limits, including a 12-month
lifetime limit for counting vocational educational training. For adults, education and
training other than vocational educational training counts only in conjunction with
other activities more closely related to work. Teen parents (under the age of 20) may
be deemed engaged in work through education.



The “work-first” approach to work participation is part of a long-standing
controversy over the effectiveness of different approaches to getting welfare
recipients off the rolls and into jobs. “Work-first” approach advocates often point to
research conducted in the 1990s that found that when the work-first and education-
focused programs were directly compared, the long-term impact of education-
focused programs on increasing earnings and reducing welfare receipt was no greater
and sometimes smaller than programs that focus on job seeking and quick attachment
to a job.15 Additionally, the impact of “work-first” programs occurs faster.
However, the evaluated programs with the largest increases in earnings and
reductions in welfare tended to have a strong work message like the “work-first”
programs but provided some flexibility for education and training. For example,
large impacts were attributed to a program operated in Portland, Oregon during the
1990s, that, like other “work-first” programs, had job search as its most common
activity. However, Portland program recipients also often participated in education
or in both job search and education during the two years following entry into the
program more often than in other evaluated programs. In Portland, job search and
education were typically done sequentially, not simultaneously.16
Additionally, a fairly large proportion of adults on welfare have certain barriers
to employment; that is, they are either ill or disabled, are taking care of ill or disabled
children, have mental health issues, or have been victims of domestic violence.
The Clinton Administration explicitly side-stepped the issue of whether TANF’s
work activities should accommodate activities designed to address “barriers” to
work, allowing states themselves to interpret the 12 federal categories of activities
and decide what specific activities were countable toward the participation standard.17
The comprehensive welfare reauthorization proposals considered during 2002 to
2005 differed considerably in their approach to education and disabilities, reflecting
the old controversies.
Education and Training. As shown above, the TANF statute limits
education and training as activities countable toward the TANF work participation
standards. Vocational educational training is limited to 12 months in a lifetime.
Other educational activities are generally countable only in combination with work
or those activities more closely associated with work.


15 This is based on the findings of the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work (NEWWS).
NEWWS was designed specifically to test the relative effectiveness of “work-first”
programs emphasizing job search against programs that emphasized education and training.
See U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department of Education.
National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies: How Effective are Different Welfare to
Work Approaches? 2001.
16 The statement that participation in job search and education typically did not occur
simultaneously is based on an unpublished CRS analysis of participation patterns in the
Portland NEWWS program and discussions with MDRC researchers who evaluated the
program.
17 See the Notice of Proposed Rule-Making, Federal Register Vol. 62, No. 224, November

20, 1997, pp. 62137-62138.



HHS, in its interim regulations required by DRA, prohibited states from
counting coursework leading to a four-year or advanced college degree program from
being counted as “vocational educational training.” However, in its final regulations
published on February 5, 2008, HHS reversed this policy, allowing states to count all
college as vocational educational training. Thus, college can now count as the prime
or sole activity of a cash welfare recipient for up to 12 months. After 12 months,
college coursework can be combined with work (for example, a paid work-study
position) as “job skills training directly related to employment” and thus be counted
toward the TANF work participation standards.
However, in FY2006 a large share of TANF adult recipients failed to have even
a high school diploma or equivalent. Teen parents can be deemed as satisfying the
participation standards through education leading to a high school diploma or
General Educational Development (GED) credential. However, adult recipients aged
20 and older may have their participation in a GED program count only in
combination with work or with activities more closely related to work.
Figure 3 shows the educational attainment of TANF teen heads of households
and adult recipients in FY2006. Overall 42% of TANF adults and teen heads of
households lacked a high school diploma. Among the adult recipients (aged 20 and
older), 41% lacked a high school diploma or equivalent with the highest incidence
being in the youngest age categories.
Figure 3. Percent of TANF Adult and Teen Heads of Households
Without a High School Diploma or Equivalent, FY2006


Source: Congressional Research Service (CRS) analysis of the FY2006 TANF National Data files.

Under HHS regulations, participation in a GED program, adult basic education,
and English as a Second Language (ESL) activities are counted in two ways. They
may be counted within vocational educational training, if they are a “necessary” part
of a larger vocational education program. Thus, if an individual is enrolled in a
community college vocational education program, remedial adult basic education or
ESL classes that may be needed for the individual to succeed in the program may be
counted toward TANF work participation standards.
Pursuing a GED, adult basic education, and ESL activities may also be counted
in the participation categories that may be counted only in combination with work.
For single-parent families, this means that they count only after an individual already
participated for at least 20 hours in unsubsidized or subsidized work, community
service, work experience, on-the-job training, job search and readiness, vocational
educational training, or providing child care to a community service recipient. For
single parents with a school-age child, this means that activities such as pursuing a
GED, adult basic education, or ESL classes can count for the remaining 10 hours of
participation to meet the 30 hours of participation required of them. However, single
parents with a pre-school child — who comprise a large share of the young TANF
adults without a high school degree or equivalent — are required to participate for
only 20 hours per week. The state gets no further credit by having such recipients
engaged in GED, adult basic education, or ESL activities because all 20 hours of
participation must come from work or activities closely related to work.
Rehabilitative Activities. Research has consistently shown that a fairly large18
share of families receiving cash welfare have non-educational barriers to work.
Pre-TANF law exempted from participation requirements the ill and incapacitated19
and those needed in the home to care for an ill or disabled family member. TANF
made no such exemption.
Studies show that at least one-third of TANF adults have disabilities, and one20
in four families on TANF include a child with an impairment. Though federal
benefits are available for disabled persons, such as the Supplemental Security Income21
Program (SSI) and Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), cash welfare has


18 The TANF national data reported by states do not include information on disabilities or
other barriers to employment. The research is discussed below.
19 HHS regulations required that illness be determined on the basis of medical evidence and
that a physician or licensed psychologist determine that a physical or mental impairment
prevents the individual from engaging in employment or training.
20 See Nadel, Mark, Steve Wamhoff, and Michael Wiseman. “Disability, Welfare Reform,
and Supplemental Security Income,” in Social Security Bulletin. Vol 65, No. 3, January

2005, pp. 14-30.


21 The standard for federal disability benefits from either Social Security Disability
Insurance (SSDI) or SSI is “inability to engage in any substantial gainful activity by reason
of any medically determinable physical or mental impairment which can be expected to
result in death or has lasted or can be expected to last for a continuous period of not less
than 12 months...” The social security standard for disability is all or nothing: a person
either is determined disabled or not and thus eligible for benefits or not, with no accounting
(continued...)

often served as a way-station for those awaiting determination that they are eligible
for them. The SSI and SSDI disability determination process can take months or
even span several years if the initial application is turned down and appealed.
Additionally, TANF may provide benefits to those who have impairments that are not
permanent or considered severe enough to qualify them for SSI or SSDI.
Further, research by the GAO concluded that former TANF cash welfare
recipients with physical or mental impairments are less likely to be employed than
those without impairments. When those with impairments do get jobs, they tend to
be at lower wages than for those without impairments.22 As discussed below, many
families dealing with disability have — like those considered easier to employ — left
the welfare rolls and contributed to the caseload decline.
HHS conducted a study in six states23 to examine employment barriers within
their single parent, cash welfare caseloads. Figure 4 shows the percent of recipients
in six states in the HHS study with selected barriers to employment. It shows the
most common barrier was mental health issues, reported as a barrier by 30% of all
recipients. Having a child with a disability or special needs was the second most
common barrier (29%), followed by a recipient’s own physical health issue (21%).
Figure 4. Barriers to Work Reported by Welfare Recipients
(Six-State Study)


Source: Congressional Research Service (CRS) based on data in Hauan, Susan and Sarah Douglas.
Potential Employment Liabilities Among TANF Recipients: A Synthesis of Data from Six State TANF
Caseload Studies. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office of the Assistant
Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. October 2004.
21 (...continued)
for “degree” of disability.
22 U.S. Government Accountability Office. Welfare Reform: Former TANF Recipients with
Impairments Less Likely to Be Employed and More Likely to Receive Federal Supports.
GAO-03-210. December 2002.
23 The six states are Colorado, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, and
South Carolina.

Rehabilitative activities, including vocational rehabilitation, mental health
services, and substance abuse, are not explicitly mentioned in federal law as activities
that would count toward TANF work participation standards. Before DRA, states
defined these activities inconsistently across the 12 federally listed categories of work
activities that are countable toward the standards. Some states offered certain
rehabilitative services, but did not count rehabilitative activities toward the federal
work participation standards. Some states placed disabled recipients into “separate
state MOE programs,” effectively exempting them from work participation standards,
a practice not permitted under DRA.
The HHS regulations issued under the DRA place such rehabilitative activities
under the time-limited job search and readiness category. Activities in this category
are countable for up to six weeks in a year — 12 weeks under certain conditions that
many, but not all, states currently meet. No more than four consecutive weeks of job
search or readiness may be counted. The time limit applies to all activities within this
category. This sets up a “zero-sum” situation: a week spent in job search reduces the
period of time that rehabilitative activities can be counted by one week, and vice-
versa.
The final HHS regulations provided states some additional flexibility relative
to the interim regulations for counting job search and readiness. Under the interim
regulations, one hour of participation in the job search and readiness category during
the week resulted in that full week being counted toward the six- or 12-week limit.
HHS final regulations convert these six- or 12-week limits to hourly equivalents.
Over the course of a year, single-parent families with preschool children are granted
up to 120 hours of job search and readiness; other families are granted up to 180
hours in this category. (This is based on a 20 hour per week requirement for single
parents caring for a child under the age of 6, and 30 hours per week for others.)
These limits double if a state qualifies for 12 weeks of job search and readiness.
Further, the HHS regulations allow states to count “supported work” programs
for disabled recipients as either subsidized employment or on-the-job training
(depending on the content of the program). “Supported work” programs in the
vocational rehabilitation system combine employment with various support services.
HHS regulations also permit states to exempt from work participation requirements,
and exclude when calculating participation rates, families with adults needed in the
home to care for a disabled child.
S. 1730 (Smith) would allow states to create an individualized employability
plan for a disabled adult or an adult caring for a disabled family member and count
them toward the TANF participation standards. The bill would also allow states to
exempt from the participation standards applicants for SSI and those who would
temporarily meet the SSI standard for disability.
Kinship Care
TANF cash aid is usually talked about in the context of families with children
where the parents do not work, sometimes because of barriers to employment or
stable employment, or who face low wages. However, a sizeable share of the TANF
cash aid caseload — approximately 484,000 children out of the 3.5 million children



on the rolls in FY2006 — is comprised of children living with relatives, such as
grandparents, aunts or uncles. Many children living with relatives are doing so by
private or public arrangement, where a relative has simply assumed responsibility for
the children of parents who cannot or will not care for and support them. Others,
however, are caring for children who are in foster care. In this second situation, a
court, typically because of the abuse or neglect of a child by their parents, has ordered
the child removed from the home of the parents and has given the state child welfare
agency care and placement responsibility for the child.
Children ordered to foster care who are placed by the child welfare agency with
non-relatives receive a monthly foster care maintenance payment to cover their
“room and board.” However, foster children who are placed by the child welfare
agency with relatives sometimes receive a TANF payment. While a TANF payment
is typically worth much less than a foster care payment, relative caregivers are nearly
always eligible for TANF payment and may turn to it for financial support because
they do not meet the eligibility requirements for federally supported foster care. In
particular, those criteria provide that any foster family home where a child is placed
must meet state licensing requirements in order for the state to seek federal
reimbursement of a foster care maintenance payment. Many relatives cannot meet
(or do not wish to undergo) state foster care licensing procedures.
S. 661 (Clinton) and H.R. 2188 (Davis, IL) could increase relative access to
federally supported foster care maintenance payments by permitting states to
establish separate licensing standards for relatives, which, provided the standards
ensured children’s safety, could include less restrictive requirements than those for
non-relatives. Though these bills do not amend the TANF program itself, they can
affect the TANF cash aid caseload by permitting greater access to an alternative
source of federal help for relative caregivers raising children. That is, they could
transfer these families from the TANF cash aid caseload to the foster care caseload.
Child Support Pass-Through
Families receiving TANF cash welfare are required to assign (turn over rights
to) child support received from noncustodial parents to the state to reimburse it and
the federal government for their welfare costs. States may pay some or all of that
child support to the family but must pay the cost of that “passed-through” child
support. The DRA gave states a financial incentive to pass-through some child
support to families receiving cash welfare, by having the federal government share
the cost of the first $100 in monthly child support — $200 for a family of two or
more children — in passed through child support, so long as the receipt of that child
support by the family does not affect a family’s TANF eligibility or benefit amount.24
H.R. 896 (Ryan) would require all child support paid by noncustodial parents
to be passed-through to a TANF cash welfare family. However, H.R. 896 would


24 For an analysis of the DRA child support pass-through provisions, see CRS Report
RL34105, The Financial Impact of Child Support on TANF Families: Simulation for
Selected States, by Carmen Solomon-Fears and Gene Falk.

leave it up to the states to decide whether the child support received by the family
would affect TANF eligibility or decrease the TANF cash welfare benefit amount.
Further Caseload Decline
Discussions of the new TANF work participation standards have tended to focus
on the need to increase the number of recipients engaged in countable activities.
However, a state could meet the increased standards by either increasing engagement
in activities or producing further caseload declines. Thus, the DRA gives states a
strong incentive to attempt to cut their caseloads from FY2005 levels.25 Further, with
fixed federal funding through FY2010, either keeping a family off or moving a
family off the TANF cash welfare rolls helps the state meet the work participation
standards without having to spend additional funds to engage its adult members in
work. The resulting caseload decline would free up money to help maintain funding
for the “nonwelfare” activities funded through TANF.
Figure 5 shows that the national cash welfare caseload has recently resumed its
decline, after being relatively constant for a number of years. Over the most recent
12-month period, the caseload has declined by 10.4% — the greatest decline since
June 1999 to June 2000. Some of these declines are likely to stem from changes in
eligibility rules for TANF/MOE cash welfare programs, including ending
TANF/MOE funding for certain families (two-parent families, families dealing with
disabilities) and funding their benefits from state-only funds outside the TANF/MOE
system. There is no reporting on the number of families receiving benefits in state-
only programs outside of the TANF/MOE system, so it is not possible to quantify at
this point how much of the recent caseload reduction was caused by shifting families
to state-only programs.


25 Though states are not given credit for caseload declines estimated as stemming from
policy changes that restrict eligibility, there are a number of actions states can take to reduce
their caseloads without explicit policy changes. The most obvious is greater enforcement
of existing requirements.

Figure 5. Percentage Change in Families Receiving TANF/MOE Cash
Welfare: June to June of Each Year 1994-2007


Source: Congressional Research Service (CRS) based on data from the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services (HHS).
The most common metric used to evaluate welfare policies is whether they
lower welfare caseloads, and caseload decline is the most cited indicator of the
success of welfare reform. A TANF goal is to “end dependency on government
benefits,” and lower cash welfare caseloads help achieve that end. To the degree that
receipt of welfare itself helps create disadvantage, a smaller role for cash welfare in
society could be viewed as a positive outcome. Families that work are eligible for
benefits outside of the cash welfare system, and some of these benefits such as the
Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program
(SCHIP) have increased their role in supporting families with children while the role
of cash welfare has diminished.
However, the TANF welfare caseload decline raises questions about the
economic security of those who face barriers to work or cannot achieve steady work.
The available evidence indicates that the TANF caseload decline has been broad-
based: the decline has affected both those who were “work-ready” as well as those
considered “hard-to-serve.” The Urban Institute, using data from their National
Survey of American Families, estimated that from 1997 through 2002, the share of
welfare recipients with specified barriers to work had changed little. However, the
share of recent welfare leavers with barriers such as health conditions that limit work

and poor mental health has increased.26 Despite the increased role of programs that
supplement and support work, the declining role of welfare might leave families with
barriers to work or without steady work with a diminished safety net to support their
children.
Potential Legislative Issues in the 110th Congress
Related to “Nonwelfare” TANF
Benefits and Services
The savings to government budgets from the cash welfare caseload decline
remain within the TANF system for states to use in any manner reasonably calculated
to achieve the broad purposes of the block grant. In FY2006, almost half of all
TANF and MOE funding — totaling $14 billion — was available to states for
benefits, services, and activities other than those associated with traditional cash
welfare programs. TANF funds are used for a wide range of activities often
discussed in the debate about ways to combat poverty: providing early childhood
programs, supporting post-secondary education, job retention and advancement
programs, and helping noncustodial parents. Thus, while TANF cash welfare reaches
less than three in ten poor children, TANF’s nonwelfare benefits and services can
have a much broader reach into the population of disadvantaged children and their
families.
The “nonwelfare” component of TANF is much less debated than its traditional
cash welfare programs and activities for a number of reasons. First, the information
TANF requires of states to describe the “nonwelfare” component of TANF precludes
a comprehensive and systematic examination of these activities. A 2006 GAO report
found that “reporting and oversight mechanisms have not kept pace with the evolving
role in TANF budgets, leaving information gaps at the national level related to the
numbers served and how states use funds to meet welfare reform goals....”27
Second, on the basis of what is known, a great deal of TANF’s “nonwelfare”
spending goes to two other federal-state program areas: child care and child welfare.
(Child welfare means foster care, adoption assistance, and other benefits and services
for children who either have been, or are at risk of, abuse and neglect.) Both of these
areas have their own dedicated funding streams, which are supplemented with
considerable dollars by TANF. Both of these areas also have their own policy
debates which, while related to TANF, are sometimes conducted independently of
TANF debates.
The welfare reauthorization proposals considered by Congress during 2002
through 2005 included two relatively “technical” issues (use of carry-over funds and


26 Loprest, Pamela and Sheila Zedlewski. The Changing Role of Welfare in the Lives of
Low-Income Families with Children. Urban Institute, August 2006. p. 28.
27 U.S. Government Accountability Office. Welfare Reform: Better Information Needed to
Understand Trends in the States’ Uses of the TANF Block Grant. Report GAO-06-414.
March 2006.

whether certain services are classified as “welfare”) that were not in the final DRA
agreement.28 These two issues and two others relating to “nonwelfare” uses of TANF
and MOE funds are discussed below.
Allowing Carry-Over Funds to Be Spent on
“Nonwelfare” Benefits and Services
Current law allows states to reserve unused block grant funds without fiscal year
limit only for the purpose of paying cash welfare benefits. This was intended as a
reserve fund for states to draw on during recessions when it was presumed that the
cash welfare caseload could increase. The Bush Administration’s 2002 welfare
reauthorization plan, and all comprehensive reauthorization proposals considered by
Congress during the 2002-2005 period, would have allowed TANF carry-over funds
to be used for any TANF benefit or service. The proposal was not included in the
final version of DRA.
Treatment of Child Care and Transportation Aid
Under current regulations, child care and transportation aid for nonworking
families is considered “welfare.” (Child care and transportation aid for working
families is considered “nonwelfare.”) As such, receipt of these benefits by a family
triggers TANF requirements, such as the five-year time limitation on federally funded
benefits, subjection to the work participation standards, and assignment of child
support.
The Bush Administration’s 2002 welfare reauthorization proposal, and all
comprehensive welfare reauthorization proposals, would have permitted child care
and transportation aid for nonworking recipients to be considered a “nonwelfare”
benefit and service and hence not subject to TANF requirements. This proposal was
not included in the final version of DRA.
Reporting on “Nonwelfare” Benefits and Services
TANF’s detailed reporting requirements focus on families receiving cash
welfare. The statutory reporting requirements date back to the 1996 welfare reform
law, and the reporting requirements in regulations were promulgated in the wake of
that law — before it became clear that the cash welfare caseload was dramatically
declining and that the money saved from the caseload decline was being used in the
diverse ways allowed by the TANF block grant. The “TANF caseload” that is often
cited represents families receiving TANF welfare, excluding those families that
receive only “nonwelfare” benefits and services. It thus understates the number of
families benefitting from TANF-funded benefits, services, and activities.
In annual program reports due after the close of the fiscal year, states are
required to provide information on all “programs” funded with MOE dollars, with


28 The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that those two policy changes did not
have a budgetary impact. Therefore, they had the potential to spur objections under the
Senate’s “Byrd Rule” discussed earlier in footnote 5.

a description of the types of benefits and services provided and the number of
beneficiaries receiving them. These program reports do not capture the same
information for nonwelfare programs funded with federal TANF dollars.
Additionally, program expenditure information collected by HHS fails to capture
spending for child welfare benefits and services as a category (it is subsumed in other
more general categories). The result is an incomplete picture of how TANF and
MOE dollars are spent and how many families benefit from them.
The Bush Administration’s 2002 welfare reauthorization proposal would have
required reporting on nonwelfare benefits and services. All of the comprehensive
welfare reauthorization bills except one (Senate Finance Committee-reported H.R.
4737, 107th Congress) considered during 2002-2005 included provisions to extend
the annual program report information from covering the use of only MOE dollars
to covering both TANF and MOE dollars. This would have required states to
provide a description and caseload number for all “programs” and activities funded
with TANF and MOE funds.
Additionally, the 2005 Senate Finance Committee bill would have required that
the child care reporting system be extended to TANF-funded child care so that it
would be possible to determine both numbers of families receiving this benefit as
well as their characteristics (e.g. income, demographic information).
No reporting changes were included in the final version of DRA that was
enacted.
Oversight of Competitive Grants to Promote Healthy
Marriages and Responsible Fatherhood
Though much of the controversy during the welfare reauthorization debate
focused on cash welfare recipients — and their work requirements — a major
component of the Bush Administration’s 2002 welfare reform proposals was to
provide grants to promote “healthy marriages.” These initiatives were “nonwelfare”
initiatives, education in social skills as well as campaigns in schools and in the media
on the importance of marriage.
The DRA included a $150 million per year appropriation for competitive grants
to promote “healthy marriages” and “responsible fatherhood.” About $100 million
per year of these funds are for “research, demonstrations, and technical assistance”
related to promotion of healthy marriages. HHS awarded five-year grants to a variety29
of organizations from this appropriation. This amount of funding is large relative
to other available funds for research and demonstrations under TANF. (TANF has
a $15 million appropriation for both state and federally initiated research projects;
HHS also receives an appropriation for research, which was $5.7 million for
FY2007.) Congress might conduct oversight to examine how these projects are
likely to improve the research base from which programs to promote healthy
marriage may be evaluated.


29 The listing of grantees can be found at [http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/ofa/hmabstracts/
index.htm].

Child Care and Child Welfare Financing
As discussed above, TANF supplements federal funding for both the child care
block grant and the various federal programs that help fund foster care, adoption
assistance, and child welfare services. The supplement provided by TANF is fairly
large. In FY2005, total TANF and MOE funding for child care totaled about $5.4
billion, which reflected both transfers to the Child Care and Development Fund
(CCDF) and expenditures within the TANF program. At 19% of total TANF and
MOE funding, child care is the second largest category next to cash welfare within
TANF. Expenditures on child welfare activities — for example, foster care and
services for families with children who have been abused and neglected or are at-risk
of abuse and neglect — cannot be derived directly from TANF’s financial reporting
system. The Urban Institute, on the basis of a survey of the states, reported that in
state FY2004, TANF’s contribution to child welfare agency funding totaled $3.0
billion.
Thus, child care and child welfare services together account for more than half
(at least $8 billion of the $13 billion) of TANF and MOE funding available for
“nonwelfare” activities. Therefore, legislation affecting either child care or child
welfare financing could have an impact on how much funding is available for
TANF’s other activities.
Legislation affecting child welfare funding would also have an impact on
TANF. As discussed above, legislation has been introduced that would allow
nonparent relatives caring for children to be eligible for federal foster care payments;
some of these relatives currently rely on TANF cash welfare.30 This change could
transfer some cases out of TANF and onto the foster care rolls, freeing up some
TANF dollars. Other long-standing child welfare financing issues, if resolved, could
also affect the amount of TANF and MOE funds used by the child welfare system.31
Conclusion
The 110th Congress might consider a range of TANF issues. A number of them
stem from policy changes made by Congress in the DRA. These issues also touch
on some that have been long-debated, such as the role of education and training in
helping recipients move from welfare to work and achieving self-sufficiency.
Even absent a scheduled reauthorization of TANF, this may be an opportune
time to reconsider TANF issues and the role the block grant can play to help
disadvantaged families with children. The context that TANF operates in has
changed considerably from the time of the welfare reform debates in the early and
mid-1990s. The cash welfare caseload has declined substantially and incentives are
in place for states to seek further caseload declines. Non-welfare support for the


30 See CRS Report RL34388 Child Welfare Issues in the 110th Congress, by Emilie Stoltzfus.
31 See CRS Report RL32849, Child Welfare Financing: An Issue Overview, by Emilie
Stoltzfus.

working poor has increased, both with TANF-funded benefits and services (e.g.,
child care) and from other programs (e.g., Earned Income Tax Credit and State
Childrens’ Health Insurance Program).
The “nonwelfare” part of TANF has the potential to help disadvantaged families
with children through new and innovative ways. Whether that is happening is an
open question given the information gap on these activities. Illuminating TANF’s
“nonwelfare” side might recast future discussions about TANF to reflect the
changing context in which the block grant operates.



CRS-30
Appendix A. Additional Tables
Table A1. TANF and MOE Funding Per Poor Child Per Year (2006 Poverty Data)
Basic Block Grants PerTotal MOE Dollars(80% Rate) Total Basic Block Grant and StateSupplementalGrants PerTotal Federal Resources(Including Supplemental
Poor ChildPer Poor ChildFunds Per Poor ChildPoor ChildGrants) Per Poor Child
Dollars % of NationalAverageDollars% of NationalAverageDollars % of NationalAverageDollarsDollars% of NationalAverage
a nsas 345 27.8 135 16.1 480 23.1 38 518 24.6
xas 318 25.7 165 19.7 483 23.2 35 518 24.6
394 31.7 105 12.5 499 24.0 41 540 25.7
iki/CRS-RL34206a 369 29.7 165 19.7 534 25.7 44 578 27.5
g/w442 35.6 169 20.2 611 29.4 0 611 29.1
s.or550 44.3 198 23.7 748 36.0 57 805 38.3
leak
aho 547 44.0 250 29.8 796 38.3 60 856 40.7
://wikia da 505 40.7 312 37.3 817 39.3 43 860 40.9
httpnnessee 594 47.9 274 32.7 868 41.7 67 935 44.4
ota 687 55.4 294 35.1 981 47.2 0 981 46.7
lahoma 696 56.1 307 36.7 1,003 48.3 0 1,003 47.7
ona 713 57.5 325 38.8 1,038 49.9 77 1,115 53.0
i a 683 55.0 382 45.6 1,064 51.2 77 1,141 54.3
704 56.7 383 45.7 1,087 52.3 84 1,172 55.7
826 66.5 290 34.6 1,116 53.7 94 1,209 57.5
ntucky 812 65.4 322 38.4 1,134 54.5 0 1,134 53.9
747 60.2 437 52.2 1,184 57.0 0 1,184 56.3
756 60.9 491 58.6 1,246 60.0 75 1,322 62.9
987 79.5 312 37.2 1,298 62.4 51 1,349 64.2

836 67.4 494 58.9 1,330 64.0 0 1,330 63.2



CRS-31
Basic Block Grants PerTotal MOE Dollars(80% Rate) Total Basic Block Grant and StateSupplementalGrants PerTotal Federal Resources(Including Supplemental
Poor ChildPer Poor ChildFunds Per Poor ChildPoor ChildGrants) Per Poor Child
Dollars % of NationalAverageDollars% of NationalAverageDollars % of NationalAverageDollarsDollars% of NationalAverage
rginia 731 58.9 632 75.4 1,363 65.6 0 1,363 64.8
816 65.7 574 68.5 1,390 66.9 88 1,477 70.3
a 921 74.2 485 57.8 1,405 67.6 0 1,405 66.8
i rginia 1,143 92.1 357 42.7 1,500 72.2 0 1,500 71.4
nsas 956 77.0 618 73.7 1,573 75.7 0 1,573 74.8
1,226 98.8 451 53.9 1,678 80.7 31 1,708 81.2
1,023 82.4 736 87.8 1,759 84.6 0 1,759 83.6
iki/CRS-RL34206on 1,191 96.0 698 83.3 1,889 90.9 0 1,889 89.8
g/w1,077 86.8 844 100.8 1,921 92.4 0 1,921 91.4
s.orota 1,448 116.7 531 63.3 1,978 95.2 0 1,978 94.1
leakwa 1,374 110.7 691 82.4 2,065 99.3 0 2,065 98.2
://wiki1,431 115.3 820 97.8 2,251 108.3 0 2,251 107.0
httpoming 1,546 124.5 807 96.4 2,353 113.2 0 2,353 111.9
1,611 129.8 825 98.5 2,436 117.2 0 2,436 115.9
l va nia 1,548 124.8 935 111.6 2,483 119.4 0 2,483 118.1
1,658 133.6 940 112.3 2,598 125.0 0 2,598 123.5
pshire 1,376 110.9 1,224 146.1 2,600 125.1 0 2,600 123.7
an 1,742 140.3 1,123 134.0 2,864 137.8 0 2,864 136.2
e rsey 1,655 133.4 1,312 156.6 2,967 142.7 0 2,967 141.1
ton 1,750 141.0 1,256 150.0 3,006 144.6 0 3,006 143.0
1,768 142.4 1,265 151.0 3,032 145.9 0 3,032 144.2
land 1,768 142.5 1,457 173.9 3,225 155.2 0 3,225 153.4
2,200 177.3 1,714 204.6 3,914 188.3 0 3,914 186.1
rmont 2,712 218.5 1,561 186.3 4,273 205.6 0 4,273 203.2



CRS-32
Basic Block Grants PerTotal MOE Dollars(80% Rate) Total Basic Block Grant and StateSupplementalGrants PerTotal Federal Resources(Including Supplemental
Poor ChildPer Poor ChildFunds Per Poor ChildPoor ChildGrants) Per Poor Child
Dollars % of NationalAverageDollars% of NationalAverageDollars % of NationalAverageDollarsDollars% of NationalAverage
a 2,405 193.8 1,974 235.7 4,379 210.7 260 4,640 220.6
s land 2,680 215.9 1,816 216.8 4,496 216.3 0 4,496 213.8
bia 2,525 203.4 2,049 244.6 4,574 220.0 0 4,574 217.5
2,586 208.4 2,156 257.3 4,742 228.1 0 4,742 225.5
2,750 221.6 2,064 246.3 4,814 231.6 0 4,814 228.9
3,012 242.7 2,209 263.7 5,220 251.1 0 5,220 248.3
2,983 240.4 2,348 280.3 5,331 256.5 0 5,331 253.5
iki/CRS-RL34206or the 50
g/w1,241 100.0 838 100.0 2,079 100.0 24 2,103 100


s.orlumbia
leak
://wiki
http

Table A2. TANF Work Participation Rates
for FY2006, by State
All Two-Parent
StateFamilies (%)Families (%)
United States32.545.9
Alabama41.6a
Alaska45.654.2
Arizona29.667.5
Arka nsas 27.9 22.3
California22.2a
Colorado 30.0 35.2
Connecticut 30.8 a
Delaware25.3a
Dist. of Columbia17.113.1
Florida41.0a
Georgia64.9a
Guam0.00.0
Hawaii37.3a
Idaho44.239.2
Illinois53.0a
Indiana26.7a
Iowa39.0a
Kansas77.282.3
K e ntucky 44.6 51.3
Louisiana 38.4 42.5
Maine26.6a
Maryland44.5a
Massachusetts 13.6 a
Michigan 21.6 26.2
Minnesota30.3a
Mississippi 35.5 a
Missouri18.7a
Montana79.283.3
Nebraska32.0a
Nevada47.8a
New Hampshire24.1a
New Jersey29.2a
New Mexico42.354.5
New York37.848.9
North Carolina32.454.0
North Dakota51.9a
Ohio54.955.5
Oklahoma 32.9 a



All Two-Parent
StateFamilies (%)Families (%)
Oregon15.222.6
Pennsyl va nia 26.1 32.5
Puerto Rico13.1a
Rhode Island24.994.3
South Carolina49.564.7
South Dakota57.9a
Tennessee57.2a
Texas42.0a
Utah42.5a
Vermont22.233.9
Virgin Islands14.5a
Virginia53.9a
Washington 36.1 43.1
West Virginia26.2a
Wisconsin 36.2 17.1
Wyoming77.275.9
Source: Table prepared by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) based on
data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
a. State did not serve two-parent families within its TANF program in FY2006.



Table A3. TANF and MOE-Funded Cash Welfare Families,
by Family Type, FY2006
Single- Two- No-
Parent Parent Parent aTotal
State Families FamiliesFamiliesFamilies
Alabama 10,260 295 8,974 19,528
Alaska 2,117 472 1,025 3,614
Arizona 20,419 407 18,726 39,551
Arka nsas 3,872 118 4,187 8,177
California 225,640 38,432 223,550 487,622
Colorado 8,403 933 5,131 14,468
Connecticut 12,572 1,321 8,203 22,096
Delaware 2,932 105 2,572 5,609
District of Columbia9,0071246,81415,945
Florida 13,005 876 39,731 53,612
Georgi a 8,034 86 23,747 31,867
GuamNRNRNRNR
Hawaii 5,665 1,367 2,400 9,432
Idaho 369 26 1,423 1,818
Illinois 18,236 244 18,704 37,184
Indiana 25,218 2,241 19,679 47,138
Io wa 14,287 1,520 5,276 21,083
K a nsas 11,403 1,229 4,600 17,232
K e ntucky 15,329 617 17,146 33,092
Louisiana 3,537 82 8,301 11,920
Maine 7,859 585 2,773 11,216
Maryland 13,065 115 8,712 21,892
Massachusetts 28,434 2,828 16,670 47,932
Michigan 51,717 4,135 27,101 82,953
Minnesota 17,726 3,036 9,763 30,525
Mississippi 6,364 0 7,053 13,417
Missouri 30,091 3,171 11,085 44,348
Montana 2,048 434 1,330 3,812
Nebraska 8,270 1,006 3,542 12,818
Neva da 3,334 314 3,381 7,028
New Hampshire3,9442752,0516,270
New Jersey28,7001,94012,14742,786
New Mexico10,3607005,83516,895
New York108,1297,43362,403177,966
North Carolina10,81725719,09830,172
North Dakota1,99107012,692
Ohio 33,250 3,187 43,048 79,485
Oklahoma 3,960 38 6,211 10,208
Oregon 9,736 674 8,733 19,143
Pennsyl va nia 61,525 4,536 28,635 94,696
Puerto Rico11,27403,05114,325



Single- Two- No-
Parent Parent Parent aTotal
State Families FamiliesFamiliesFamilies
Rhode Island7,2119324,14512,287
South Carolina9,7806607,65918,099
South Dakota98901,8342,823
T e nnessee 50,804 679 17,893 69,376
T e xas 25,724 1,939 45,075 72,738
Utah 4,499 29 2,964 7,492
V e rmont 3,155 536 1,083 4,774
Virgin Islands3050129434
V i rginia 21,579 1,440 11,957 34,975
Washington 29,508 5,701 20,876 56,085
West Virginia5,5586305,30611,495
Wisconsin 6,532 284 11,470 18,286
Wyoming 67 2 239 308
Totals 1,028,60897,990834,1401,960,738
(Except for Guam)
Source: Congressional Research Service (CRS) based on data from the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services (HHS).
a. “No-Parent Families” are those in which the adults in the family or households are not themselves
considered recipients of assistance. In these families benefits are paid only on behalf of the child.
These families are sometimes calledchild-only families for the purposes of TANF.



Table A4. TANF and MOE-Funded Cash Welfare Families,
by Family Type, as a Percent of Total
Cash Welfare Families, FY2006
Single- Two- No-
Parent Parent Parent Total
State Families Families Families Families
Alabama 52.5 1.5 46.0 100.0
Alaska 58.6 13.1 28.4 100.0
Arizona 51.6 1.0 47.3 100.0
Arka nsas 47.4 1.4 51.2 100.0
California 46.3 7.9 45.8 100.0
Colorado 58.1 6.4 35.5 100.0
Connecticut 56.9 6.0 37.1 100.0
Delaware 52.3 1.9 45.9 100.0
District of Columbia56.50.842.7100.0
Florida 24.3 1.6 74.1 100.0
Georgi a 25.2 0.3 74.5 100.0
GuamNRNRNRNR
Hawaii 60.1 14.5 25.4 100.0
Idaho 20.3 1.4 78.3 100.0
Illinois 49.0 0.7 50.3 100.0
Indiana 53.5 4.8 41.7 100.0
Io wa 67.8 7.2 25.0 100.0
K a nsas 66.2 7.1 26.7 100.0
K e ntucky 46.3 1.9 51.8 100.0
Louisiana 29.7 0.7 69.6 100.0
Maine 70.1 5.2 24.7 100.0
Maryland 59.7 0.5 39.8 100.0
Massachusetts 59.3 5.9 34.8 100.0
Michigan 62.3 5.0 32.7 100.0
Minnesota 58.1 9.9 32.0 100.0
Mississippi 47.4 0.0 52.6 100.0
Missouri 67.9 7.2 25.0 100.0
Montana 53.7 11.4 34.9 100.0
Nebraska 64.5 7.8 27.6 100.0
Neva da 47.4 4.5 48.1 100.0
New Hampshire62.94.432.7100.0
New Jersey67.14.528.4100.0
New Mexico61.34.134.5100.0
New York60.84.235.1100.0
North Carolina35.90.963.3100.0
North Dakota73.90.026.1100.0
Ohio 41.8 4.0 54.2 100.0
Oklahoma 38.8 0.4 60.8 100.0
Oregon 50.9 3.5 45.6 100.0
Pennsyl va nia 65.0 4.8 30.2 100.0



Single- Two- No-
Parent Parent Parent Total
State Families Families Families Families
Puerto Rico78.70.021.3100.0
Rhode Island58.77.633.7100.0
South Carolina54.03.642.3100.0
South Dakota35.00.065.0100.0
T e nnessee 73.2 1.0 25.8 100.0
T e xas 35.4 2.7 62.0 100.0
Utah 60.1 0.4 39.6 100.0
V e rmont 66.1 11.2 22.7 100.0
Virgin Islands70.30.029.7100.0
V i rginia 61.7 4.1 34.2 100.0
Washington 52.6 10.2 37.2 100.0
West Virginia48.45.546.2100.0
Wisconsin 35.7 1.6 62.7 100.0
Wyoming 21.8 0.7 77.5 100.0
National Average 52.55.042.5100.0
(Except for Guam)
Source: Congressional Research Service (CRS) based on data from the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services (HHS).