The Evolution of the US Workfare Model

Abstract

Aid to Families with Dependent Children,¹ a means-tested cash benefit originally designed to help single mothers to look after their children, was traditionally one of the most unpopular social programmes in the United States. The reasons for this lack of legitimacy lay in the fact that welfare recipients were deemed dependent on social assistance. In the 1980s, deep-rooted negative views about the poor and the rise of neoliberal doctrines played a crucial role in the emergence of a political backlash against this programme. Political élites emphasised the role of individual responsibility as opposed to welfare dependency. The idea that ‘welfare queens’ — as President Ronald Reagan called black welfare recipients — could drive luxury cars at the expense of taxpayers was particularly repellent to middle-class US voters. It is thus no coincidence that Bill Clinton’s ambiguous promise ‘to end welfare as we know it’ became one of the most powerful slogans of the New Democrats in the 1992 presidential campaign and set the stage for a radical revolution in US social policy. In August 1996, the US Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). Under the new legislation, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) replaced AFDC. TANF created a five-year lifetime limit for receiving cash assistance and obliged welfare recipients, 90 per cent being single mothers, to find paid employment as quickly as possible.