![US Department of Health and Human Services seal](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/US_Department_of_Health_and_Human_Services_seal.svg)
Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) was a
federal assistance
In the United States, federal assistance, also known as federal aid, federal benefits, or federal funds, is defined as any federal program, project, service, or activity provided by the federal government that directly assists domestic governme ...
program in the United States in effect from 1935 to 1997, created by the
Social Security Act (SSA) and administered by the
United States Department of Health and Human Services
The United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is a cabinet-level executive branch department of the U.S. federal government created to protect the health of all Americans and providing essential human services. Its motto is ...
that provided financial assistance to children whose families had
low or no income.
The program grew from a minor part of the social security system to a significant system of
welfare
Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifical ...
administered by the
states with federal funding. However, it was criticized for offering incentives for women to have children, and for providing disincentives for
women to join the
workforce
The workforce or labour force is a concept referring to the pool of human beings either in employment or in unemployment. It is generally used to describe those working for a single company or industry, but can also apply to a geographic reg ...
. In July 1997, AFDC was replaced by the more restrictive
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF ) is a federal assistance program of the United States. It began on July 1, 1997, and succeeded the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, providing cash assistance to indigent A ...
(TANF) program.
History
![Welfare Benefits Payments Graph](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Welfare_Benefits_Payments_Graph.gif)
The program was created under the name Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) by the
Social Security Act of 1935 as part of the
New Deal. It was created as a
means tested entitlement which subsidized the income of families where fathers were "deceased, absent, or unable to work".
It provided a direct payment of $18 per month for one child, and $12 for a second child.
In 1994, the average payment was $420/month.
The federal government required contributions from individual states, and authorized state discretion to determine who received aid and in what amount.
ADC was primarily created for white single mothers, who were expected not to work. Black mothers, who had always been in the labor force, were not considered eligible to receive benefits.
In 1961 a change in the law permitted states to extend benefits to families where the father was unemployed, a measure which 25 states eventually adopted.
The words "families with" were added to the name in 1962, partly due to concern that the program's rules discouraged marriage.
The
Civil Rights Movement
The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...
and the efforts of the
National Welfare Rights Organization in the 1960s expanded the scope of welfare entitlements to include black women. The welfare rolls racial demographics changed drastically. The majority of welfare recipients still remained white and most black female recipients continued to work.
Starting in 1962, the Department of Health and Human Services allowed state-specific exemptions as long as the change was "in the spirit of AFDC" in order to allow some experimentation. By 1996 spending was $24 billion per year. When adjusted for inflation, the highest spending was in 1976, which exceeded 1996 spending by about 8%. In 1967 the federal government began requiring states to establish the paternity of children eligible for the program, and extended benefits to "unemployed male parents with a work history".
Man-in-the-house rule
A number of states enacted so called "man-in-the-house" rules, which disqualified families if there was any adult male present in the household whatsoever. This was part of a broader attempt to discourage welfare dependency by the undeserving, in particular black families where the man didn't have work or where the woman had a relationship with men who didn't take care of the family.
The "man-in-the-house" rule was struck down in 1968 by the
Supreme Court in ''
King v. Smith
''King v. Smith'', 392 U.S. 309 (1968), was a decision in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) could not be withheld because of the presence of a "substitute father" who visited a f ...
''. Thereafter, families with males in the household were eligible for benefits if they were not deemed to be actual or substitute parents, although any financial contribution on the part of the male to the family was still considered a part of the family's total income.
By 1981, the Supreme Court went further and required that states take into consideration the income earned by step-fathers.
Thirty-and-a-third rule
The year 1967 saw the establishment of the thirty-and-a-third rule, which allowed families to keep their first $30 earned along with one third of their income following the first $30 without the change affecting their eligibility for benefits.
This and other factors led to a large increase in enrollment.
For example, caseloads rose 24% from 1960 to 1965, but rose 126% in the period from 1965 to 1970.
Criticism
![Nonmarital Birth Rates in the United States, 1940-2014](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/36/Nonmarital_Birth_Rates_in_the_United_States%2C_1940-2014.png)
Early in the program, there were concerns about whether it encouraged
unwed motherhood.
Some advocates complained that the rule had the effect of breaking up marriages and promoting matriarchy:
e AFDC program tended to treat households with a cohabiting male who was not the natural father of the children much more leniently than those with a resident spouse or father of the children. This feature created a clear disincentive for marriage and also a clear incentive for divorce, because women who married face the reduction or loss of their AFDC benefits.
In 1984,
libertarian author
Charles Murray Charles Murray may refer to:
Politicians
*Charles Murray, 1st Earl of Dunmore (1661–1710), British peer
*Charles Murray (author and diplomat) (1806–1895), British author and diplomat
*Charles Murray, 7th Earl of Dunmore (1841–1907), Scotti ...
, author of
The Bell Curve
''The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life'' is a 1994 book by psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray, in which the authors argue that human intelligence is substantially influenced by ...
, suggested that welfare causes
dependency. He argued that as welfare benefits increased, the number of recipients also increased; this behavior, he said, was rational: there is little
reason to work if one can receive benefits for a long period of time without having to work.
His later work and that of
Richard J. Herrnstein
Richard Julius Herrnstein (May 20, 1930 – September 13, 1994) was an American psychologist at Harvard University. He was an active researcher in animal learning in the B. F. Skinner, Skinnerian tradition. Herrnstein was the Edgar Pierce Profess ...
and others suggested possible merit to the theory of a
dysgenic
Dysgenics (also known as cacogenics) is the decrease in prevalence of traits deemed to be either socially desirable or well adapted to their environment due to selective pressure disfavoring the reproduction of those traits.
The adjective "dysgeni ...
effect, however, the data are not entirely clear.
One economist was unable to find convincing evidence that welfare programs have a strong effect on the dissolution of marriages. But right or wrong, this argument was among the stepping stones leading to the modification of AFDC toward TANF.
Termination
In 1996, President
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...
negotiated with the
Republican
Republican can refer to:
Political ideology
* An advocate of a republic, a type of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship, and is usually associated with the rule of law.
** Republicanism, the ideology in support of republics or agains ...
-controlled
Congress
A congress is a formal meeting of the representatives of different countries, constituent states, organizations, trade unions, political parties, or other groups. The term originated in Late Middle English to denote an encounter (meeting of ...
to pass the
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) is a United States federal law passed by the 104th United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. The bill implemented major changes to ...
, which drastically restructured the program. Among other changes, a lifetime limit of five years was imposed on the receipt of benefits; the newly limited nature of the replacement program was reinforced by calling AFDC's successor
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF ) is a federal assistance program of the United States. It began on July 1, 1997, and succeeded the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program, providing cash assistance to indigent A ...
(TANF). Many Americans continue to refer to TANF as "welfare" or AFDC.
TANF has remained controversial. In 2003, LaShawn Y. Warren, an
ACLU Legislative Counsel, said that TANF gives states an incentive "to deny benefits to those who need it most. The solution to getting people out of the cycle of poverty is not to prematurely kick them off welfare. Too many have been denied aid unfairly, creating a false impression that the number of people who need help has decreased." In 2006, a ''
New Republic'' editorial wrote, "A broad consensus now holds that welfare reform was certainly not a disaster—and that it may, in fact, have worked much as its designers had hoped."
[Fared Well. New Republic, September 4, 2006, Vol. 235, Issue 10, Page 7.]
See also
*
Administration for Children and Families
The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) is a division of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It is headed by the Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services for Children and Families. It has a $49 billi ...
*
Goldberg v. Kelly
''Goldberg v. Kelly'', 397 U.S. 254 (1970), is a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution requires an evidentiary hearing before a recip ...
*
Universal basic income
Universal basic income (UBI) is a social welfare proposal in which all citizens of a given population regularly receive an unconditional transfer payment, that is, without a means test or need to work. It would be received independently of a ...
Notes
References
Further reading
* Keith M. Kilty, Elizabeth A. Segal. ''The Promise of Welfare Reform: Political Rhetoric and the Reality of Poverty in the Twenty-First''. (2006)
* Clarita A. Mrena and Patricia Elston. ''Welfare Reform: State Sanction Policies and Number of Families Affected'' (2000)
* Robert P Stoker and Laura A Wilson. ''When Work Is Not Enough: State and Federal Policies to Support Needy Workers'' 2006
* Webster G. Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin. ''George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography''
* Joel N. Shurkin. ''Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age''. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2006.
* Herrnstein, R. J. and Murray, C. (1994). ''The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life''. New York: Free Press.
* Charles Murray, 1984. ''Losing Ground: American Social Policy''. 1950–1980
* Nick Gillespie. "Transcendental goods".
Reason (magazine)
''Reason'' is an American libertarian monthly magazine published by the Reason Foundation. The magazine has a circulation of around 50,000 and was named one of the 50 best magazines in 2003 and 2004 by the ''Chicago Tribune''.
History
''Reaso ...
, April 1, 2004
"The Bell Curve Flattened"by Nicholas Lemann, in
Slate (magazine)
''Slate'' is an online magazine that covers current affairs, politics, and culture in the United States. It was created in 1996 by former '' New Republic'' editor Michael Kinsley, initially under the ownership of Microsoft as part of MSN. In ...
(January 1996)
"Is the Great Society to Blame? If Not, Why Have Problems Worsened Since '60s?"by Michael Fumento,
Investor's Business Daily
''Investor's Business Daily'' (''IBD'') is an American newspaper and website covering the stock market, international business, finance and economics. Founded in 1984 by William O'Neil as a print news publication, it is owned by News Corp and is ...
, June 19, 1992
"Cracked Bell"by Professor
James Heckman
James Joseph Heckman (born April 19, 1944) is a Nobel Prize-winning American economist at the University of Chicago, where he is The Henry Schultz Distinguished Service Professor in Economics and the College; Professor at the Harris School of Pu ...
in Reason (March 1995)
"Federal and State Expenditures for AFDC"from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services website
"A Brief History of the AFDC Program"from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (website)
by Sharon K. Long & Sandra J. Clark, posted to the
Urban Institute
The Urban Institute is a Washington, D.C.–based think tank that carries out economic and social policy research to "open minds, shape decisions, and offer solutions". The institute receives funding from government contracts, foundations and pr ...
website October 1, 1997
"Women, Children, and Poverty in America"by Prudence Brown,
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation is an American private foundation with the stated goal of advancing human welfare. Created in 1936 by Edsel Ford and his father Henry Ford, it was originally funded by a US$25,000 gift from Edsel Ford. By 1947, after the death ...
website
"Timeline of National Welfare Reform"from
PBS.org
The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...
External links
Aid to Families with Dependent Children at HHS''The Future of Children'' Executive Summary, Center for the Future of Children, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, at Princeton University website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Aid To Families With Dependent Children
1935 establishments in the United States
1997 disestablishments in the United States
Former United States Federal assistance programs
United States Department of Health and Human Services
1935 introductions