The Aid to Families with Dependent Children (“AFDC”) general welfare program was created in 1935, amidst the terrible economic times of the Great Depression. It was one of many major new programs enacted through the “New Deal” legislation of President Franklin D. Roosevelt to try and help the millions of Americans who were suffering due to the economic times of the 1930s. With no economic recovery in sight, President Roosevelt and Congress hoped and believed that the AFDC program was one of several that would help those who were unemployed or only able to find reduced work hours each week. Since 1996, the AFDC program was replaced in Congress by the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (“TANF”) program.
The AFDC program can be summed up as a cash assistance program to poor individuals and families. The program’s primary focus, as its name suggests, was to primarily help children whose parents did not have the financial means to support them. A child who was considered needy under the program was defined as those who were “deprived of parental support or care because their father or mother is absent from the home continuously, is incapacitated, is deceased, or is unemployed.” Federal law outlined the general rules and functions of the program and individual states administered it and were also able to add their own individual rules and requirements so long as they complied with the “federal umbrella” that Congress had put into place.
Eligibility and Scope of the AFDC Program
Only the poorest of families were normally eligible for this child welfare-based AFDC program while it was in existence. Only families who had at least one dependent child under the age of 18 who was a United States citizen or legal permanent resident could qualify for the program. Qualifications were typically based upon the household income earned. For example, in 1994, a single parent household that had three dependent minor children could not earn more than $938 per month in order to receive benefits in most states.
The program grew widely in its scope by the time Congress changed it to the TANF program in 1996. In its final year of existence, more than $24 billion was spent on AFDC benefits.
Breakdown of AFDC Recipients
The demographics of who received AFDC program benefits is very telling. From an educational standpoint, 47% of all adult recipients had no high school education. 53% of adult recipients began receiving AFDC benefits and compensation before they turned age 25. 58% of recipients had never been married and more than half, 52%, claimed their youngest child to be one year old or younger. Furthermore, 39% of adults enrolled in the AFDC program had not been working at all over the 12 months leading up to the time that they began receiving compensation under the program.
The Future – TANF Benefits
The TANF program has now entirely taken over the AFDC program. It offers benefits to the same demographic and group (households with young children) as before but is now effected by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 9which put the “welfare to work” welfare system in place), which now limits an individual’s eligibility for AFDC and other welfare-type benefits to 5 years over the person’s lifetime. Overall, Congress and President Clinton, who signed the bill into law, believed that the public welfare of the country would improve because the incentives to remain on the welfare rolls of the United States would be replaced with a mandate to develop a sustainable household income. Whether that is the case or not remains to be seen.
Source: futureofchildren.org/futureofchildren/publications/docs/07_01_01.pdf
Related posts:
[...] EntitlementRelated Sites : AFDC [...]