This evolution toward a work-based system of support progressed further as a result of state responses to the 1996 welfare law. As a result, the typical one-parent family with children was far better off working than on welfare, and employment rates among this group increased dramatically, due to the strong economy of the 1990s, welfare reform, and the availability of these expanded work supports In 1999, low- and moderate-income families were eligible for $52 billion in assistance from these programs, compared to the $6 billion they would have been eligible for if these programs had not been expanded by Congress after the mid-1980s. In addition to the EITC, the major benefits in the system include the child tax credit, the minimum wage, state income supplement programs, food stamps, health insurance, and child care. Unlike welfare benefits, which are intended primarily for the destitute, these work support benefits are designed to provide cash and other benefits to working adults and their families.
#WELFARE TO WORK CLOCK STOP AFTER LABOR SERIES#
Beginning roughly in the mid-1970s with the enactment of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), the federal government originated or expanded a series of programs that provide benefits to working families. In addition, with some exceptions, a limit of five years was placed on the receipt of cash welfare by individual families.įar less visible than the widely debated welfare reform revolution was a second set of reforms in public policy that may be even more important in the long run. Among other provisions, the 1996 reforms required work of almost every adult that joined the welfare rolls. The American public came to believe that this system of entitlement benefits contributed to a decline in work by poor parents and an even more striking decline in the number of poor children being reared in two-parent families. Under pre-1996 law, low-income families were entitled to a package of welfare benefits that included cash, food stamps, and Medicaid. The 1996 welfare reform law represents a fundamental shift in how the federal government provides support to destitute families.
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