Services for these families include child care, case management, and job retention and advancement services for families who have recently left welfare for employment as well as other low-income working families.
Although states have the flexibility under TANF to use their federal and state welfare-related funds to provide services to families not receiving monthly cash assistance, these families are not reflected in caseload data reported to the Department of Health and Human Services. Moreover, the underlying rationale of a bonus system is that it can encourage states to mount new programs to achieve the desired improvement in performance.
New programs generally cost money. As we have seen, there is a wide discrepancy between states in the amount of money they receive from the basic TANF grant. Thus, wealthy states have an advantage in mounting new programs aimed at winning bonus payments simply because they have more money to invest.
The illegitimacy bonus appears to enjoy only weak support in Congress primarily because it is difficult to identify a clear relationship between states that have actually won the bonus and the efforts those states put forth to win the bonus. By contrast, there is considerable support for the performance bonus.
To date, the performance bonuses have been awarded based on state success in placing and keeping recipients in jobs. Most observers believe that states can obtain reliable measures of job placements and job retention and that state programs seem to have an impact on state performance.
In a year in which money is tight, it might be expected that proposals to use bonus money for other purposes will be forthcoming. In fact, the Bush administration has already proposed to end the illegitimacy bonus and part of the performance bonus in order to use the money to provide funds for a marriage initiative. The bill introduced by Representative Benjamin Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means subcommittee responsible for welfare, would also eliminate the illegitimacy bonus.
The illegitimacy bonus seems unlikely to survive; what happens to the performance bonus remains to be determined. General Accounting Office. Washington, D. The Size of the Block Grant Perhaps the most fundamental question that Congress will face this year concerns the overall size of the block grant. Global Cities By , and. Asia in Washington By Kent E.
Related Topics Federalism Poverty U. Metro Areas. More on U. The Avenue America has an infrastructure bill. What happens next? Kane , and Andrew Bourne.
They hold the key to our collective future Amy Liu and Alan Berube. Get updates on economics from Brookings. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! Published Date. Publisher s. Associated Links. Material Categories. It is followed by a section of Tables and Figures that includes tables on TANF expenditures and unspent grant funds, the cash assistance caseload, characteristics of the cash assistance caseload, TANF cash assistance benefits, and work participation rates among cash assistance recipients.
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