...The Welfare Reform Act The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) enacted in 1996 came up with three basic legislative goals, to reduce dependency, child poverty, illegitimacy, and strengthen marriage. The reform has been effective in meeting each of these goals. After implementing the welfare reform, the AFDC/TANF caseloads have dropped by nearly 50%. Some argue that this decline in welfare dependency is do to a stronger economy; but with no previous economic boom, this decline has never resulted in a decline in the AFDC caseloads, let alone a 50 percent drop. It is welfare reform, not economic conditions that has produced the drastic decline in dependency in the 1990s. The fifty states vary dramatically in their states rate of caseloads that have declined, but these rates of decline are uncorrelated to differences in underlying state economic factors such as job growth rates or unemployment. States with better economies have not had greater drops in caseload. By contrast, declines in dependence are directly and strongly linked to the austerity of state workfare policies (TANF, 1936-1999). The persons against the reformation of the welfare have said that the reform will throw millions of children into poverty but in all reality child poverty has decreased because the reform was enacted, from approximately 20.8% in 1996 to 16.9% in 1999. The Black children and the families with single mother’s poverty levels have decreased as well. States...
Words: 793 - Pages: 4
...The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 was passed by Congress, and it provides Medicaid, food stamps, and enforcement of child support. And many other provisions Eligible recipients for this bill satisfy this criteria: you must have a dependent child that lives with you, have certain types of deprivation requirements (such as an absent parent. And provide proof of financial need and meet certain federal and state requirements. Still, the Welfare Reform Act has change several times in American history. For instance, in 1935, welfare was a system of open-ended government payments targeted towards single mothers with dependent children; then In the 1960’s, the welfare program was expanded as part of Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty and sought to help poor, disenfranchised Americans; Lastly, President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Reconciliation Act of 1996, which did indeed usher in a new approach to welfare for the most prominent of all welfare programs, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).” In this Act are lot of provisions that I will discuss below and regarding the impact of these provisions on the greater American society. Provision I of the bill provides Medicaid. Medicaid in 1996 required states to provide Medicaid to families who would be eligible for AFDC. Medicaid provides coverage for people with lower incomes, older people with disabilities, and some families and children. Medicaid commonly covers services such as prescription drugs, prosthetic...
Words: 669 - Pages: 3
...Assignment: The Welfare Reform Act 2 The Welfare Reform Act has made many changes in the welfare system and in this paper some of the various issues will be discussed. These issues will touch on whether the Welfare Reform Act has met the goal of helping people obtain jobs and leave the welfare program. Whether or not there has been a drop in applicants for the welfare program and if existing Medicaid beneficiaries lost their necessary coverage under the act will be covered. When the Welfare Reform Act was first created it was a replacement for Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC),it was then referred to as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF),( KU, L. 1997). The welfare reform law does not change how health care is delivered or has it made any changes in who is able to able to be accepted to the program (KU, L. 1997). According to Ku (1973), “there were only four major changes to Medicaid eligibility which are: splitting the welfare and Medicaid eligibility, narrowing eligibility for disabled children in the Supplemental Security Income (SSI), terminating access for some legal immigrants because they lose SSI, and by not allowing future legal immigrants from being accepted for Medicaid.” By making these changes then it can be said that this reform has indeed not lowered the number of people who were on the Medicaid program at the federal level. It is also at...
Words: 1328 - Pages: 6
...training of child-welfare workers the State Legislatures enacted the Child Welfare Reform Act in 1979. The program will provide preventive and rehabilitative services that focus on strengthening family relationships and to place the children back with their families as quickly as possible. If all of these services fail and the families dynamic is detrimental to the child the Act provide adoptive placement as well, so foster care will not be a common option for a temporary home of children. In response to the lack of training of staff who make decisions that can disruptive the child and families life the Child Welfare Reform Act also require workers to have adequate training of the complexing of problem related to children remove from the families, cultural backgrounds, and the legal procedures of foster care. This act is for the sole purpose of enabling...
Words: 481 - Pages: 2
...The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 on Medicaid Angie Madrigal Lisa Johnson June 24, 2012 The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 had three main purposes and several different opinions on whether they were going to work or not. The main purposes of the Welfare Reform Act were to reduce welfare dependence and increase employment, to reduce child poverty, and to reduce illegitimacy and strengthen marriage (Rector, R., & Fagan, P. F., February 6, 2003). In the 90s many States in the United States used waivers to reform their aid to families also known as AFDC programs. AFDC programs provide cash grants to low income families also known as TANF this key element of the United States economic safety net to help families with children. There is negative and positive implication of the Welfare Reform Act on Medicaid. Throughout the rest of the paper you will learn about these negative and positive implications of the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 on the Medicaid Program. There are many positive and negative implications when it concerns “The Welfare Reform Act” that came about in 1996. Welfare has been many debates dealing with this issue since the 1960s, and continues to be a contentious issue for many years to come. In the late 1980s, some communities were calling for a reform of the Welfare because their concerns for the personal responsibility. Then Welfare and Opportunity Reconciliation Act also known as PRWORA came into effect. Bill Clinton signed a personal responsibility and work opportunity...
Words: 735 - Pages: 3
...Ethical and Legal Concerns Regarding Welfare Reform Daniel Smith Business Law II, Park University Outline Ethical and Legal Concerns Regarding Welfare Reform I. Current House Vote A. Welfare Reform Act of 1996 II. Course of Welfare Reform Act A. Prejudice B. Economy III. What are President and Current Representatives saying regarding Act? A. Are Ethics being utilized properly? IV. Primary Objective of Welfare Reform Act A. Decrease Reliance B. Requirements C. Statistics D. Social Workers Some Democrats believe the 1996 welfare reform is better than the recommendations of the Obama Administration. “The House voted Thursday (September 20, 2012) to block the Obama Administration's unilateral weakening of welfare's work requirements, and political reporters are writing it off as a partisan primal scream if they notice at all.” (Unknown, 2012) All Republicans and nineteen Democrats showed their dislike of the current administrations path down the welfare reform road with an astounding 250-164 rout over welfare reform recommendations. That’s one-tenth of the Democratic caucus joining with the Republicans to say our people need welfare in its current state during these hard economic times. The Reform Act was started during the Clinton Administration in August of 1996. However, welfare has been a controversial issue since the 1960’s. It was not until the late 1980’s, when the citizens...
Words: 2188 - Pages: 9
...Welfare Reform A number of countries across the globe do have welfare programs, essentially these are government systems aimed at helping families and individuals in need. For instance, America has elaborate systems that aim to offer fairly complete systems, which aid Americans not only in monetarily terms but also through other forms of assistance such as medical care services, and work training programs (Rushefsky, 2013). Consequently, this paper seeks to understand how did the PRWORA Act of 1996 change America's welfare system? Moreover, we shall seek to know how a mandated vocational training or job skills program will help the current system. The success of such welfare systems has been widely studied, monitored intimately, and adjusted accordingly to suite different situations. Thus, the government saw the need to place much emphasis on changing the norm from the “Welfare to Work” ostensibly this was aimed at decreasing overreliance on federal aid (Weil, and Finegold, 2011). This is imperative since welfare programs are the most intricate systems to be rolled out by any government and thus require enormous expenditure in terms of human and financial resources. The other reason is that welfare systems are aimed at providing assistance to the majority poor who are otherwise very needy (Weil, and Finegold, 2011). Thus, any dysfunction of the system can result to great suffering to many citizens; it can also cause immense concern to stakeholders. In the year 1996, the American...
Words: 1346 - Pages: 6
...Phil Chu AMS/WMS 139 11/2/11 Reading Response #2–Biopolitics: Population, Intersectionality and Reproductive Justice In 1996, the Personal Responsibility Act “reformed welfare” when it created the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (Mink 196). The most significant aspect of these reforms was the fact that welfare was now designed not only to help impoverished families, specifically children, but also to “promote marriage, reduce out-of-wedlock births, and to ‘encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families’”(196). The Adoption Promotion Act, passed in the same year, called for “the removal of barriers to interethnic adoption,” which Ana Teresa Ortiz and Laura Briggs argue was meant to “put the children of welfare mothers . . . into white adoptive homes” (203). These two changes in welfare policy marked a significant increase in the amount of biopower wielded by the state. The importance of the health and development of children within a society had been recognized early in the 20th century when particular emphasis began to be placed on “the value of a healthy and numerous population as a national resource”(Davin 161). However, the changes in welfare policy that were enacted in the 90’s went a step beyond mere protection of children, but in order to understand this significance it is necessary to look at it within the context of American biopolitics as a whole. The term “biopolitics”–which evolved from 18th century discourses about the idea...
Words: 1099 - Pages: 5
...Children and Youth Services Review 29 (2007) 698 – 720 www.elsevier.com/locate/childyouth Family economic well-being following the 1996 welfare reform: Trend data from five non-experimental panel studies Kristen Shook Slack a,⁎, Katherine A. Magnuson a , Lawrence M. Berger a , Joan Yoo b , Rebekah Levine Coley c , Rachel Dunifon d , Amy Dworsky e , Ariel Kalil f , Jean Knab g , Brenda J. Lohman h , Cynthia Osborne i a School of Social Work, University of Wisconsin—Madison, 1350 University Avenue, Madison, WI 53706, United States b Columbia University, United States c Boston College, United States d Cornell University, United States e Chapin Hall Center for Children, University of Chicago, United States f University of Chicago, United States g Princeton University, United States h Iowa State University, United States i University of Texas at Austin, United States Available online 10 January 2007 Abstract This analysis summarizes trends in family economic well-being from five non-experimental, longitudinal welfare-to-work studies launched following the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA). The studies include a sizable group of parents and other caregivers who received TANF at the point of sample selection or shortly thereafter, and share a wide range of similar measures of economic well-being. This analysis provides descriptive information on how these families are faring over time. Our results confirm what has...
Words: 12726 - Pages: 51
...B RANT AABA G 6 Foxglove Ct. • Bolingbrook, IL 60440 • grant.baaba@gmail.com • (630) 863-7056 ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ E DUCATION 2008-2013 D ARTMOUTH C LLEGE O Bachelor of Arts Degree - Sociology Coursework includes: Introduction to Sociology, The Sociological Classics, Quantitative Analysis of Social Data, Single & Multivariable Calculus, Marketing and Business Management, Politics Crises & Ideas, The Culminating Experience in Sociology, Writing in the Workplace Research Topics: Mechanical vs. Conceptual Teaching of Mathematics in American Elementary Schools, 1996 Welfare Reform Act, 2009 Helping Families Save their Homes Act 2004-2008 B HOOL OGAN HIGH S C High School Diploma Awards: Gates Millennium Scholar, Daughters of American Revolution Scholar, Academic Decathlon Highest Team Scorer (2006-2008), 3rd Ranking in Graduating Class ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ E XPERIENCE Fall 2011-Spring 2013 D ARTMOUTH UDENT CESSIBILITY RVICES S T A C S E Hanover, NH Intern • Edited text to improve student comprehension by using text-to-speech software • Initiated projects to reach goals before deadline • Developed skills in using Adobe and Kurzweil programs Fall 2011-Spring 2013 D ARTMOUTH LLEGE...
Words: 362 - Pages: 2
..."The role of Disraeli was the most important in the achievement of Parliamentary Reform in 1867." How valid is this view? The representation of the People Act in 1867, more commonly known as the Reform Act of 1867 or the Second Reform Act was a piece of British legislation that enfranchised the urban male working class in England and Wales. The 1867 Reform Act was the second major attempt to reform Britain’s electoral process – the first being the 1832 Reform Act. It was not just the role of Disraeli but one must also take consideration to popular pressure and take note of the role of the middle class and working class radicals, the importance of the Reform League and union, the importance of Hyde Park Riots and that of other important political figures such as Gladstone, Derby and Russell and the importance of different political parties; the Conservative and Liberal Party. The passage of the Reform Act resulted in; The 1867 Reform Act enfranchised 1,500,000 men. All male urban householders and male lodgers paying £10 rent a year for unfurnished accommodation got the right to vote. The act all but doubled the electorate. 52 seats were redistributed from small towns (less than a population of 10,000 such as Chichester, Harwich and Windsor) to the growing industrial towns or counties. Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester saw their representation increase from 2 MP’s to 3 MP’s. The University of London was also given a seat. The counties of Cheshire, Kent, Norfolk, Somerset...
Words: 2204 - Pages: 9
...represents their views. In the 1850’s the franchise was restricted to upper class male landowners who had the choice between two parties, the Conservatives and the Liberals. Industrial cities were poorly represented and corruption commonplace. However, the Industrial revolution changed the social and economic structure in Britain, where the emerging middle classes were demanding political reform. Throughout the late 19th century a number of acts were passed that ensured Britain were well on their way to becoming fully democratic. The extension of the franchise in Britain was a significant factor in securing democratic status. The Second Reform Act of 1867, known as the “Great leap in the dark” doubled the British electorate and gave one in three men living in towns the vote if they were property owners or paid an annual rent of over £10. This was a step towards democracy however, although a greater number of men were now liable to vote the electorate system was still dominated by middle classes and voting remained open to bribery and corruption. The 1884 Reform Act proposed further parliamentary reform, allowing working class men living in the countryside the same voting rights as those in towns; thus ensuring the electorate was further doubled to almost 5million. Universal suffrage was quickly evolving and political parties faced increasing pressure. The rapid extension of the franchise stimulated differentiating political ideology and this aided democracy as voters were given more...
Words: 1066 - Pages: 5
...was the reform act of 1832 passed? There were several major factors involved in the build up to the reform act which all led to the government having to enforce the reform act to keep the people happy. The voting system was extremely out of date, having not been altered since the 18th century and the government had not taken into consideration the demographic changes with had taken place since then. There were many rotten boroughs (Areas which had low vote to high representation ratio) and yet many fast growing cities like Leeds and Manchester had little or no representation at all which meant that no proportional voting was in place. The swing riots was an explosion in Britain at the time as it was such a huge movement of industrial workers, unhappy at low wages, high unemployment and new labour saving devices led the workers to attack machinery and burn barns which was affecting the amount of work in the country. This put pressure on the government to change, something they were not used to and caused panic in parliament as they were worried about a revolution which were rife at that time throughout Europe e.g. France. Another major turning point was the passing of the catholic emancipation act (1829) which caused outrage in parliament and led to the break up of the Tory party, many of them outraged at the passing of this act. All of these are main factors which led to an angry and dis-contented country, fighting for their rights and the enforcement of a reform act. Britain...
Words: 2495 - Pages: 10
...by one voter to represent this borough in parliament. There was no other candidate or opposition.” I think that this should not have happened in 1820 because they were being sexist. For me I find this a terrible thing like racism. The 1832 Reform Act (a.k.a Great Reform Act). This reform act was an act of parliament. Most argue that it did not lead to lots if quick changes it got people more convinced that they have the right to vote as well not just men who were rich. After this there were two more reform acts. Chartism was a working-class movement for political reform in Britain between 1838 and 1848 which took its name from the People's Charter of 1838. The Chartists made ‘The Peoples Charter’ it consisted of six basic reforms which were: Every man over 21 who is not a criminal or insane should be allowed to vote, voting should be done in secret, candidates should not need to be rich or own property to become a Member of Parliament, all Members of Parliament should be paid for doing their job, all electoral areas should represent the same number of people, elections should be held annually. The 1867 Reform Act was the second major attempt to reform Britain’s electoral process – the first being the 1832 Reform Act. The 1867 Reform Act is properly titled the Representation of the...
Words: 945 - Pages: 4
...Why did Chartism Fail? * Chartism failed because of economic factors – it was simply a ‘knife and fork question’ * Chartism failed because of the inherent weakness of the movement and internal divisions within the movement * Chartism did not really fail in the truest sense of the word – it was defeated by the state Economic Factors Some historians have argued that improving economic conditions ensured the Chartist movement faded after 1848 – there had been worsening economic conditions in the period after 1837 which gave rise to the chartist movement. After this period, the lessening economic instability, growing prosperity and rise in living standards after 1848 removed basis for widespread discontent. In economic prosperity – Chartism could no longer be sustained. The interpretation has been questioned in recent decades – economic historians began questioning how stable the British economy really was during this time in ‘Mid-Victorian Boom’ (1850-73) e.g. Cunningham – disagrees as he believes the economy continued to fluctuate. A series of subtle economic changes undermined the movement after 1848 and led to the movement’s eventual fall. 1. Development of Railways – Provided stimulus to industries; iron, steel and coal. Economic growth less narrowly based than in period before 1850 when textiles had been leading sector 2. Factory Legislation – Legislation redefined management practices and relationships in the workplace; 1850s-60s saw development...
Words: 1639 - Pages: 7
