Comparing the New (TANF) with the Old (AFDC) - A Brief Background Of Afdc

Because the U.S. welfare system was based on the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program for about sixty years, it is important to understand that program before comparing TANF to it. Following this brief background, the rest of the chapter will compare the old system with the new.

Part of the Social Security Act

The Great Depression of the 1930s brought enormous suffering to many Americans. The administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933–45) introduced a large amount of social legislation designed to ease some of that misery. The Social Security Act (August 14, 1935) was the most significant piece of legislation passed during that time. Title IV of the act was a cash grant program that would enable states to aid needy children who lacked one or both parents. Renamed Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) in the 1950s, the program became active in all fifty states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands in the 1960s.

Helping Widows

The primary goal of Title IV of the Social Security program was to provide economic support for children whose parent (usually the father) had died, had left, or had become disabled. The AFDC program was modeled after the many state Mother's Pension funds, which had provided assistance to single mothers, mainly widows.

The AFDC program was not controversial when it was first enacted. At that time, many women did not work, and widows were generally considered unemployable and morally deserving of aid. After all, it was not their fault that their husbands had died. Furthermore, during a time when there were few jobs, legislators, having a bias toward providing jobs to male breadwinners first, considered it wiser to pay a widow a small pension than to have her take a "man's" job. Finally, most legislators believed that a mother belonged in the home, raising her children and that AFDC support helped to maintain that situation. Since that time, widows and their children have been increasingly covered under the survivor's insurance provided by the Social Security Act.

Although congressional representatives were thinking mostly of widows, benefits were granted to poor mothers who were alone for reasons other than the deaths of their spouses. They did not expect that a significant percentage of those eligible for AFDC would be single mothers other than widows. Furthermore, no one at the time could have foreseen the huge increase in the number of female-headed households that would later lead to the large growth of the AFDC program. Finally, many legislators thought paying AFDC to mothers was a better alternative than having to pay to care for the children in orphanages, where many poor mothers had been forced to put their children when they could not afford to take care of them.

Growing AFDC Caseloads Lead to Reevaluation

In 1962, 3.5 million Americans were receiving AFDC. Just five years later, in 1967, the number had grown to five million. Eligibility rules had been expanded. Poor, rural African-Americans who had often been denied benefits were moving to the cities, which added to urban poverty. Community-action groups and advocates for the needy were helping the poor get benefits for which they were eligible. Divorces were increasing, and more babies were being born outside marriage. All these factors contributed to the increase in AFDC recipients, as well as a growing concern about caseloads, their cost, and the characteristics of the recipients.

CHANGING ATTITUDES TOWARD WOMEN.

The AFDC rolls and programs grew as divorced, separated, and never-married women sought help. While these women were still generally considered unemployable and best suited to staying at home with their children, many Americans considered that the behavior that led to such women receiving AFDC should disqualify them. They believed that a mother's single status was immoral and threatening to the ideal of the traditional family of a father, mother, and children. This led legislators and many others to look upon welfare as a moral issue. Since the 1970s, the stigma once attached to divorce and separation has nearly disappeared, and those concerned about the moral issues have focused primarily on the never-married mother.

Several other factors contributed to the changing attitudes toward women on welfare. In the 1960s the number of African-American women on the AFDC rolls began to increase. In the past, discriminatory practices had often prevented their receiving the assistance to which they were legally entitled. However, as these barriers slowly fell, the number of African-American women receiving support began to grow. The eventual overrepresentation of African-American women receiving AFDC payments tended to reinforce existing racial stereotypes and to lessen support for the AFDC program.

Finally, as the number of women entering the work-force grew, it seemed increasingly difficult to justify poor women receiving AFDC payments that allowed them to stay at home with their children. The "traditional" value that the mother belonged at home with her children was beginning to erode as a greater number of women began entering the workforce. Many people reasoned that welfare recipients should not be at home when many millions of nonpoor women were out in the labor force, either supporting themselves or increasing the family income. This attitude contributed greatly to the idea sometimes known as "workfare," in which the welfare recipient is expected to do some kind of work for his or her assistance, an old idea that has reappeared throughout American history.