Welfare Reform—The First Eight Years
Eight years after the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA; PL 104-193), welfare reform remained a hotly debated topic. In April 2003 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued its fifth annual Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) report to Congress. The report showed that welfare reform has caused major changes in welfare caseloads and expenditures, but noted that some aspects of the reforms have had adverse effects on child well-being, family income, and marriages.
A new aspect of welfare reform, initiated in 2002, is the development of programs to promote marriage among unwed parents and to advocate "responsible fatherhood." This initiative is based on the findings in numerous studies that married-couple households do better economically, and that children of married-couple households seem to enjoy better health, education, and employment opportunities than children from single-parent households, especially those headed by an unwed female. In Are Married Parents Really Better Off for Children?: What Research Says about the Effects of Family Structure on Child Well-Being (Washington, DC: Center for Law and Social Policy, May 2003), Mary Parke reported that the relationship between marriage and child well-being is not as clear-cut as policies suggest.
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