South By North Strategies, Ltd.

In a series of four blog posts, Off the Charts explains what has happened to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program since the enactment of “welfare reform” in 1996. Among other findings,  the reform sparked a continuous decline in the number of families receiving assistance and the decline has continued irrespective of the health of the larger labor market.

As the graph below shows,  only 27 of every 100 families in poverty participated in TANF in 2009, down from the 1996 level of 68 out of every 100  poor families.