Abstract
The passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996 devolved responsibility for the design of welfare programs from the federal to state governments in the U.S. The strategies implemented to achieve some of the main goals of the reform might have had the effects of reducing the protection received by the most vulnerable households and increasing differences in benefit levels across states. We estimate these effects using Temporary Assistance for Needy Families data covering the two decades after the PRWORA’s enactment. We find that inequality levels across states increased and that a general process of degradation in the adequacy of these cash benefits took place ensuing devolution of welfare reform in the U.S.
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Acknowledgements
Luis Ayala and Jorge Martínez-Vázquez acknowledge financial support from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (ECO2016-76506-C4-3-R). Elena Bárcena-Martín acknowledges financial support from the Universidad de Málaga. Luis Ayala and Elena Bárcena-Martín acknowledge financial support from the Comunidad de Madrid (H2019/HUM-5793). The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon request.
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Ayala, L., Bárcena-Martín, E. & Martínez-Vázquez, J. Devolution in the U.S. Welfare Reform: Divergence and Degradation in State Benefits. J Econ Inequal 20, 701–726 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-021-09512-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10888-021-09512-8