Welfare 10 years later: Stats may look good, but poverty continues

Published: 2006-07-28

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Ten years after the nation's welfare system was reorganized, with new work requirements and built-in cutoff triggers for recipients, evaluating how well it has worked is a classic Washington numbers game. For some, there has been spectacular success with the 1996 legislation that did away with even the word welfare -- rechristening the program Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF. They cite decreases in the number of people receiving assistance, fewer children living in poverty and a slowed rate of out-of-wedlock births. Other people point out that while there may be fewer people with incomes below the federal poverty level than there were in the mid-1990s, the number in "deep poverty" has climbed by 750,000 and overall poverty has been growing again since 2000. Strict rules and obstacles such as an inability to get into agency offices during business hours mean that fewer than half the people eligible for TANF participate.

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