Welfare-to-Work Programs - Work Requirements For Tanf Recipients

The purpose of the TANF provisions differs significantly from that of the JOBS program. The stated purpose of JOBS was to ensure that needy families with children "obtain the education, training and employment that will help them avoid long-term welfare dependence." The purpose of the TANF is to "end the dependence of needy parents on government benefits by promoting job preparation, work, and marriage." The 1996 welfare law imposed work conditions but did not specifically fund work programs. However, the 1997 Balanced Budget Act established a $3 billion welfare-to-work grant program for 1998–99. The president's fiscal-year 1998 budget proposed funding of $4.1 billion over five years to create or subsidize jobs.

FIGURE 9.1
Percentage of Job Corps members who received educational credentials within a 48-month period after enrollment

TANF recipients are expected to participate in work activities while receiving benefits. After twenty-four months of assistance, states must require recipients to work at least part-time in order to continue to receive cash benefits. States are permitted to exempt certain groups from the work-activity requirements, including parents of very young children (up to one year) and disabled adults. The TANF law defines the "work activities" that count when determining a state's work participation rate. Table 9.4 lists the work-activity requirements by state for single parents who are at least twenty years old and nonparental caretakers.

To be counted as a work participant, a TANF recipient was required to work at least twenty hours a week in 1997 and 1998. This requirement rose to twenty-five hours in 1999 and thirty in 2000, unless the recipient has a child under six. In the first two years, the twenty required hours were to be spent in one or more of these nine high-priority activities:

• An unsubsidized job (no government help)
• A subsidized private job

TABLE 9.3
Workforce Investment Act job training programs for adults and youth: New enrollees, federal appropriations, and outlays, fiscal years 1999–2003
[Appropriations and outlays in millions of dollars]

Fiscal year	Program	Participants	Appropriations	Outlays
1999	Adult	324,800	955	884
	Youth	120,000	130	181
2000	Adult	268,700	950	797
	Youth	307,200	1,001	431
2001	Adult	398,500	950	759
	Youth	375,500	1,128	723
2002	Adult	475,200	945	1,078
	Youth	396,500	1,128	1,072
2003 (est)	Adult	545,600	899	968
	Youth	445,800	994	1,140
SOURCE: "Table 15–WIA 3. WIA Job Training Programs for Adults and Youth: New Enrollees, Federal Appropriations, and Outlays, Fiscal Years 1999–2003," in The Green Book, U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means, 2003 [Online] http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/greenbook2003/WIA.pdf [accessed February 4, 2004]

• A subsidized public job
• Work experience
• On-the-job training
• Job search and job readiness (a usual maximum of six weeks)
• Community service
• Vocational educational training (a twelve-month maximum)
• Providing child care for a community service participant.

Three additional activities—work-related job skills training, work-related education, and satisfactory attendance at high school or its equivalent—became countable only if the parent or caretaker spent twenty hours in the other nine activities. Therefore, after 1998, when recipients worked five or ten hours more, they spent the hours beyond twenty in activities ten to twelve and received credit for them as a work participant. In able-bodied two-parent families, one parent must work, or the two parents can share, thirty-five hours a week, with thirty hours in one or more of the first nine activities. (See Table 9.4.)

Additional provisions apply to young parents who are under age twenty and are either household heads or married and who lack a high school diploma. They will be considered "engaged in work" if they either maintain satisfactory attendance in high school (no hours specified) or participate in education directly related to work (twenty hours a week).

Education and Training

Reflecting a "work-first" philosophy, the 1996 welfare law limits the number of TANF recipients who may get work credit through participation in education and training. No more than 30 percent of TANF families who are counted as engaged in work may consist of persons who are participating in vocational educational training. Vocational educational training is the only creditable work activity not explicitly confined to high school dropouts.

In contrast, the prior law funded, and states were required to offer, education and training. Participants in the JOBS program were allowed to count postsecondary education as a JOBS activity. In 1995 higher education activities accounted for nearly 23 percent of the monthly average of JOBS participants. Because very few education and training programs count as work activities, many groups have urged that the definition of vocational educational training be more broadly defined to include training and education for persons beyond high school. For the estimated one-third of welfare recipients with a low literacy level, the National Governors' Association in 1997 urged "greater flexibility to count basic education activities toward the work requirement." However, the proponents of putting work first believe that education and training are more valuable and meaningful after a recipient is employed. They contend that participation in JOBS education and training programs often became the end in itself rather than the intended transition to a job.