104-193 ) was its focus on requiring and promoting work and job preparation for parents (mostly single mothers) in needy families with children. That law created the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant, and completed a decades-long evolution in policy, from one where cash assistance was provided to families headed by single mothers to permit them to stay at home and care for their children to one of encouraging and ultimately requiring work. TANF's work rules generally date back to the 1996 welfare reform law, which was enacted following a period of growth in the welfare rolls. This report
provides a short history of work requirements in programs that provide cash assistance to needy families with children; reviews the major studies that contribute to the knowledge of what types of welfare-to-work programs are effective; discusses the TANF work provisions that apply directly to individuals and analyzes FY2011 data on engagement in work and work-related activities of adults in TANF households; discusses the TANF work participation standards that apply to states and analyzes FY2011 data on participation as they relate to those standards; and discusses some issues that Congress might consider in the future, such as how the work standards can address changing circumstances and the difficulties of measuring the performance of states in the context of a block grant. Experimental Studies

Follow-up studies to the welfare-to-work experiments of the 1980s and 1990s have yielded mixed results on new initiatives to improve program impacts. States were also subject to participation standards. The statutory purpose of TANF is to increase state flexibility to achieve the following goals:
1. provide assistance to needy families so that children may be cared for in their own homes or in the homes of relatives; 2. end the dependence of needy parents on government benefits by promoting job preparation, work, and marriage; 3. prevent and reduce the incidence of out-of-wedlock pregnancies and establish annual numerical goals for preventing and reducing the incidence of these pregnancies; and 4. encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families. Cash welfare itself accounted for less than 30% of all TANF and MOE funds in FY2011. The next several sections of this report
provide a description of TANF work-eligible adults; briefly discuss TANF's work requirements as they apply directly to work-eligible individuals; and discuss the TANF work participation standards—the main performance measure for TANF that assesses state welfare-to-work efforts. Most are single mothers, many with young children. TANF work-eligible individuals also tend to have lower educational attainment than the population as a whole, with 41% lacking a high school diploma or equivalent. It shows that on average in a month in FY2011,
42% of all TANF work-eligible individuals (about 548,000 persons) were reported as either employed or having participated for at least one hour in a job preparation activity during the month; participation in activities among TANF work-eligible individuals was split about evenly, with 21% of work-eligible individuals employed in unsubsidized jobs and 21% otherwise engaged in work or job preparation; and the majority (58%) of work-eligible individuals were reported as having no participation in the month. However, that is not how state welfare-to-work programs are formally assessed. If a state achieves caseload reduction of 50%, its all-family standard is reduced by 50 percentage points—from 50% to 0%. The time-limited pre-employment activities of job search and readiness (10.7% of all individuals in families included in the participation rate) and vocational educational training (5.9% of such individuals) were the next most common activities . The required minimum hours per week in a month vary by the family's composition. For FY2011, the national average work participation rate was 29.5% for all families. However, some two-parent families receive assistance. Separate state programs are state programs with expenditures counted toward the TANF MOE but not considered TANF programs. TANF is a broad-based block grant to the states, with federal goals but a great deal of flexibility in meeting those goals. It was created in 1996, and it reflected the policy concerns of the 1980s and 1990s in terms of welfare receipt and dependency. Policy makers also face questions about whether the sole focus of assessing TANF ought to be its welfare-to-work performance, or whether attention should also be paid to how well TANF does in terms of meeting other goals related to improving the circumstances of families with children.
One of the central features of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant is promoting work and job preparation for parents (mostly single mothers) in families that receive cash assistance. TANF was created in the 1996 welfare law, which was the culmination of a decades-long evolution from providing single mothers "pensions" to permit them to stay home and raise children to a program focused on work. State TANF programs were influenced by research conducted during a period of much experimentation on welfare-to-work initiatives in the 1980s and early 1990s, which found that mandatory work requirements could reduce welfare receipt and increase employment among single mothers.
TANF aids some of the most disadvantaged families with children. These families are in a wide range of circumstances, and some of them are not subject to state welfare-to-work efforts. In FY2011, about 6 in 10 TANF assistance families had "work-eligible" individuals. TANF work-eligible individuals comprise in great part single mothers with young children. In FY2011, about a third of TANF work-eligible mothers were young (under the age of 24). Additionally, 40% of all work-eligible women lacked a high school diploma or the equivalent.
As a block grant to the states, TANF sets federal goals such as ending dependence of needy parents on government through work and job preparation, gives states flexibility in program design to achieve those goals, and measures the performance of states. The work requirements that actually apply to recipients are determined by the states, not by federal rules. In FY2011, 42% (monthly average) of all work-eligible adults were either working or engaged in a job preparation activity. The most common activity was working in a job while remaining on the rolls. Job search and vocational educational training followed as the second and third most common activities.
While state rules—not federal rules—determine work requirements for individual TANF recipients, federal TANF law establishes work participation standards that apply to the states and influence state program designs. The federal work standards are performance measures used to assess state TANF welfare-to-work efforts. The federal TANF work standards set target participation rates, specify activities that can be counted toward meeting the standards, and set minimum hours of engagement per week in a month for a recipient to be considered engaged in countable activities. The target participation rates vary by state: the statute sets a 50% standard for all families, but the standard is reduced by credits states may earn for caseload reduction. In FY2011, the official TANF work participation rate was 29.5%; however, all but seven states, the District of Columbia, and Guam met their all-family work standard.
The TANF work standards date back to the 1996 law, and reflect the policy concerns and the research on welfare-to-work programs of the time. Research on new welfare-to-work models since the 1996 law has yielded mixed and limited results. However, some innovations in workforce and education programs have yet to be tested within a welfare-to-work context. Policy makers also face questions about whether the sole focus of the assessment of TANF's success ought to be welfare-to-work. TANF has evolved into a program where cash assistance represents less than 30% of its funds. Policy makers thus face questions of whether consideration might be given to developing measures and assessment of how well TANF does in meeting other goals related to improving the circumstances of families with children.