When TANF replaced AFDC in 1996, the new policy stipulated that recipients could receive no more than 5 years of benefits in a lifetime. It was meant to encourage workforce participation and cut long-term dependency. But this constraint has created a class of extremely poor people, neither working nor receiving help form the government. H. Luke Shaefer says: “There’s this this crazy notion that we retrenched welfare—what we really did was reorient it towards people who are working when they are working, and away from people who are struggling at the very bottom….And for folks at the very bottom, it’s leading to very bad outcomes.”

More about Shaefer says TANF has left the unemployed struggling at the bottom >