Work Requirements and
Work Supports for Recipients of
Means-Tested Benefits
JUNE | 2022
Low Income
Workforce
Income
Development
Services
Families With
Sources
Training
Earnings
Benefits
Subsidized
Employment
Federal
Budget
Reduc d
Poverty
Deep
Single
Mothers
Welfare
Reform
Economic
Conditions
Enrollment
Cash
Payments
Federal
Funding
Goods Services
Policy
Options
of
Policies
Child
Care
Job-Search
Assistance
Temporary
Assistance
for Needy Families
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
Medicaid
Unemployment
Rate
Budgetary
Savings
and
Barriers to Work
Participants
Online Tools
Years
Months
Programs
Work
Literature
Recipients
Able-Bodied
Adults
Aid
to
Families
Children
Dependent
With
Families
Children
Young
With
Poverty
Thresholds
At a Glance
In this report, the Congressional Budget Oce analyzes the eects of work requirements and work
supports on employment and income of participants in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
(TANF), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Medicaid. e agency also
assesses how changing work requirements and work supports in those programs would aect the
federal budget. In many cases, the size of those eects is highly uncertain.
Effects of Work Requirements on Employment, Income, and the Federal Budget
•
Making the receipt of benets contingent on working or preparing to work has substantially
increased the employment rate of the targeted recipients in TANF during the year after they enter
the program and by a smaller amount in later years. Work requirements in SNAP have increased
employment less; in Medicaid, they appear to have had little eect on employment.
•
Although some people have higher income because they work more to meet the programs’
requirements, other people do not meet the work requirements and are left with little income
from in-kind benets, cash payments, earnings, or other sources. Overall, the increase in total
earnings from TANF’s work requirements is about equal to the reduction in benets. In contrast,
work requirements in SNAP and Medicaid have reduced benets more than they have increased
people’s earnings.
•
In general, tightening work requirements would reduce federal spending by decreasing the amount
of benets provided; the extent of the budgetary savings would depend on the details of the policy.
If lawmakers used the savings from tightening work requirements to increase work supports that
helped recipients meet those requirements, the federal budget would change little (or perhaps not
at all).
Effects of Work Supports on Employment, Income, and the Federal Budget
•
Subsidized child care, job-search assistance, and subsidized employment have increased the
employment of recipients, whereas job training has had mixed results.
•
In addition to boosting recipients’ earnings, federal funding for work supports has freed up
income that recipients would have spent on those supports to instead be spent on other goods and
services.
•
If policymakers chose to expand work supports, they would need to provide additional funding.
Child care subsidies can cost several thousand dollars per recipient, whereas less intensive services
(such as assisting people who are searching for a job by providing access to literature and online
tools) generally cost less.
www.cbo.gov/publication/57702
Contents
Summary 1
How Do Work Requirements Aect People’s Employment and Income? 1
How Do Work Supports Aect People’s Employment and Income? 2
How Might Policymakers Change Work Requirements and Work Supports? 2
Chapter1: An Overview of Work Requirements, Work Supports, and Means-Tested Programs 5
Work Requirements and Work Supports in Recent Years 5
Changes to Work Requirements and Work Supports During the 1990s 6
Changes in Federal Spending and Enrollment 8
Chapter2: Eects of Work Requirements on People’s Employment and Income 11
TANF 11
SNAP 18
Medicaid 19
Chapter3: Eects of Work Supports on People’s Employment and Income 21
Subsidized Child Care 21
Workforce Development Services 22
Chapter4: Factors That Aect How Work Requirements and Work Supports Change
People’s Employment and Income 25
Participation in Work-Related Activities in the Absence of Work Requirements and Work Supports 25
Barriers to Work 26
Economic Conditions 27
Chapter5: Options for Changing Work Requirements and Work Supports 31
Two Options That Would Expand Work Requirements 31
Two Options That Would Reduce Work Requirements 33
Two Options That Would Expand Work Supports 34
One OptionThat Would Decrease Work Supports 37
iv WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
Boxes
1-1. How Are Means-Tested Programs Funded? 9
2-1. How Policy Changes Made to Means-Tested Programs During the 1990s Aected
Single Mothers’ Employment 13
AppendixA: Sources of Income for Families 24Months After They Start Receiving Cash Assistance 39
The SIPP Data That CBO Used 39
CBO’s Approach to Analyzing the SIPP Data 39
Families’ Sources of Income 24Months After Receiving Cash Assistance 41
AppendixB: The Eects of Work Requirements on People’s Employment and Income in Recent Years 43
The HHS Data That CBO Used 43
Eects of Work Requirements When the Unemployment Rate Is High 44
Eects of Work Requirements on Families With Young Children 44
List of Tables and Figures 52
About This Document 53
Notes and Definitions
To complete and publish this report promptly, the Congressional Budget Oce used its
July2021baseline for the analysis. CBO expects that the ndings would be similar had the analysis
used the agency’s most recent baseline (published in May2022).
Unless this report indicates otherwise, all years referred to are federal scal years, which run from
October1 to September30 and are designated by the calendar year in which they end.
Numbers in the text, tables, and gures may not add up to totals because of rounding.
Projected future costs and the other dollar gures in the options are in nominal dollars. All other
dollar gures are expressed in 2019 dollars, using the price index for personal consumption expendi-
tures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis to remove the eects of ination.
Some of the gures in this report use shaded vertical bars to indicate periods of recession. (A recession
extends from the peak of a business cycle to its trough.)
References to states include the District of Columbia.
A TANF recipient is a person who receives recurring cash payments through the Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families program. Data on the recipients of other forms of assistance provided
by TANF, such as job training, are limited.
Intensive job-search assistance is generally provided in person, such as through workshops or one-on-
one career counseling.
An able-bodied adult is a person over the age of 17who does not receive disability benets (either
through Supplemental Security Income or Disability Insurance).
A parent is a person who lives with one or more dependents under the age of 18.
A child is a dependent who is under the age of 18.
Cash income generally consists of earnings, business income, income from savings, child support,
and cash payments from means-tested programs, Social Security, and unemployment insurance. at
measure of economic well-being is similar to what the Census Bureau uses to determine the ocial
poverty rate.
Income includes cash income, in-kind benets from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,
and refundable tax credits. at measure of economic well-being is similar to what the Census Bureau
uses to determine the Supplemental Poverty Measure.
Poverty thresholds are used by the Census Bureau to determine the ocial poverty rate. e thresh-
olds are based on family income and dier for families of dierent sizes.
vi WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
Deep poverty is when a family’s cash income is less than half of the applicable poverty threshold.
Welfare reform is the term for a series of actions that policymakers took in the mid-1990s to encour-
age employment among benet recipients and shorten the duration of benet receipt. It consisted of
executive actions that introduced work requirements in Aid to Families With Dependent Children
(the program that preceded TANF) and implementation of provisions of the Personal Responsibility
and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act.
Summary
e federal government has many programs that are
designed specically to help people who have relatively
low income obtain food, health care, housing, and other
goods and services that they might not otherwise be
able to aord. ose means-tested programs provide
cash payments or other assistance to qualied recipients.
If recipients’ earnings rise, then their benets typically
decline. To counter that incentive for participants to
work less, the programs often incorporate work require-
ments (which make the receipt of benets contingent
on working or preparing to work) and work supports
(which make working more feasible and protable for
participants). Work support programs usually also have
work requirements. (For example, only people who work
are eligible for the earned income tax credit.)
is report focuses on work requirements and work
supports in three federal programs: Temporary Assistance
for Needy Families (TANF), the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program (SNAP), and Medicaid. Of those
programs, TANF is the smallest, providing monthly
cash payments to about 1million families each year. By
law, most able-bodied parents who receive those benets
must participate in work-related activities. SNAP and
Medicaid serve much broader and larger populations
than TANF; they also have included work requirements
at times, but typically applied them only to able-bodied
adults without dependents. To support recipients who
are working or searching for work, policymakers have
made subsidized child care and workforce development
services available to some participants in those programs,
particularly TANF.
In this report, the Congressional Budget Oce analyzes
how work requirements and work supports aect the
employment and income of former, current, and poten-
tial participants. In addition, the agency estimates how
changes to those requirements and supports would aect
the federal budget over the next nine years. Even though
research suggests that means-tested programs can con-
tinue to aect former participants for many years, this
report focuses on the programs’ more immediate eects.
How Do Work Requirements Aect
People’s Employment and Income?
TANF’s work requirements have generally increased
employment while having little eect (on net) on average
income. Some recipients have earned more by getting a
job, but others have lost benets without nding work,
which probably increased the number of people in deep
poverty. Work requirements in SNAP and Medicaid have
also reduced the benets that people receive but have
increased their employment or earnings less (for SNAP
recipients) or maybe not at all (for Medicaid recipients).
TANF recipients facing work requirements have been
provided with strong work supports, unlike SNAP and
Medicaid recipients.
TANF
Most of the research on work requirements focuses on
single mothers who received recurring cash payments
through TANF or its predecessor, Aid to Families With
Dependent Children. e imposition of work require-
ments in the 1990s boosted the employment of those
single mothers but had little eect on their average
income, mainly because the increase in earnings for those
who worked was about equal to the reduction in cash
payments for those who lost benets. e number of
people receiving cash payments has continued to decline
over the past two decades; by 2019, the number of recip-
ients was about 2million, or one-seventh of what it had
been in 1993.
Although TANF’s work requirements have probably had
little eect on average income among single mothers,
those requirements have probably changed how income
is distributed among that group. e mothers who
gained employment often saw their income boosted by
higher earnings and receipt of additional tax credits, but
many mothers who lost benets because they did not
meet the work requirements were left in deep poverty.
TANF continues to be the primary source of recurring
cash assistance for able-bodied single mothers without
education beyond high school, but the percentage of
those mothers who are receiving assistance has fallen
along with the total number of recipients.
2 WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
Before work requirements were imposed, nearly all
less-educated single mothers who did not work for an
extended period received cash payments. By calendar
year 2019, though, about one-seventh of less-educated
single mothers had no earnings and no cash assistance,
CBO estimates. Many of those families report hav-
ing almost no income beyond benets from SNAP.
By removing families from TANF before they found
work—and by deterring families from entering the pro-
gram—work requirements have probably played a role in
increasing the number of families in deep poverty.
SNAP
SNAP’s work requirement has probably boosted employ-
ment for some adult recipients without dependents but
has reduced income, on average, across all recipients.
Earnings increased among recipients who worked more,
but far more adults stopped receiving SNAP benets
because of the work requirement. Most of the adults
who had their SNAP benets terminated for failing to
comply with the work requirement have very low income
because few of them have earnings or receive cash
payments.
Medicaid
Evidence of the eect of work requirements on Medicaid
recipients is limited to Arkansas, the only state where a
work requirement was imposed on recipients for more
than a few months. ere, many of the targeted adults
lost their health insurance as a result of the work require-
ment. Employment did not appear to increase, although
the evidence is scant. Research indicates that many par-
ticipants were unaware of the work requirement or found
it too onerous to demonstrate compliance.
How Do Work Supports Aect
People’s Employment and Income?
Most work supports increase employment and income.
Subsidized child care, for instance, benets single parents
(its main recipients) by boosting their employment and
increasing their resources substantially. Parents who nd
employment benet from higher earnings, and those
who would have purchased child care even without a
subsidy have more income to spend on other goods and
services. (e resources of some working parents are
unaected because they would have had a relative or
friend watch their children in the absence of the subsidy.)
Job-search assistance and subsidized employment
provided by workforce development programs have
increased employment and income, but job training
provided by those programs has had mixed results.
According to a study conducted by the Department of
Labor in the early 2010s on two of the largest workforce
development programs, intensive job-search assistance
(such as career counseling) increased participants’
average earnings by about $2,200in the year following
the receipt of assistance. In contrast, job training could
reduce employment and income by causing participants
to delay their job search or by reducing the number of
hours they work. In the Department of Labor’s study,
participants in job-training programs worked less while
in training and did not work more or earn more after-
ward, on average.
Lawmakers modied the large workforce development
programs in 2014 to better align job training with the
demands of local employers. A comparable evaluation
of those programs’ eectiveness since then might show
increased employment and income from job-training
programs if the alignment between those programs
and labor market demand has improved lately. Recent
research demonstrates that job training provided by
smaller programs can increase employment and income
when it focuses on the demands of local employers.
How Might Policymakers Change
Work Requirements and
Work Supports?
To increase employment, raise income, or reduce federal
spending, the Congress could pursue various options
that would change work requirements and work sup-
ports. ose options fall into four broad categories.
Options in a category would typically accomplish similar
objectives, although the eects of any particular option
on employment, income, and the federal budget would
depend on its details (see Table S-1).
•
Options that expanded work requirements would
typically increase employment. But they would
have little eect on recipients’ average income (net
of medical expenses, in the case of Medicaid) or
would reduce it because the overall loss in benets
would equal or exceed the total gain in earnings
from increases in employment. Some participants’
earnings would increase more than their benets
decreased; other participants would be left without
any earnings or benets. If the work requirements
were tied to receipt of SNAP or Medicaid, the
loss in benets would reduce federal spending
3SUMMARY WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS
because the government pays for a xed portion
of the cost of those benets. In this analysis, CBO
assessed expanding work requirements in SNAP and
Medicaid. e SNAP option that CBO discusses in
this report might not reduce federal spending because
it includes additional spending on work supports.
e other option would substantially increase the
amount that people who lost Medicaid coverage pay
out of pocket for medical services.
•
Options that reduced work requirements would
typically increase federal spending on benets
and reduce employment. ey would decrease
the number of people with very low income and
would either raise average income or change it
little. Reducing work requirements during periods
of high unemployment could boost recipients’
income substantially while having little eect on
employment. In this analysis, CBO assesses reducing
work requirements in SNAP and TANF. e TANF
option would not increase federal spending because
that program’s funding is set at a xed total.
•
Options that expanded work supports would typically
lead to larger gains in income than options that
expanded work requirements, but they would also
push up federal spending. In addition, they would
increase employment and reduce recipients’ expenses
for work supports, leaving them with more income
to spend on other goods and services. In this analysis,
CBO assesses one option that would provide more
workforce development services to TANF recipients
when jobs are scarce and a second option that would
generally increase funding for subsidized child care.
•
Options that reduced work supports would typically
lead to less employment, lower income, and reduced
federal spending. In this analysis, CBO assesses an
option that—rather than reducing federal spending—
would shift funding from work supports to cash
payments for nonworking families. Such a policy
would reduce employment but could raise recipients’
income and make deep poverty less prevalent.
Table S-1 .
Typical Eects of Changing Work Requirements and Work Supports,
by Broad Category of Options
Option
Category
Typical Eects on People Subject to the Change
Typical Eect on
Federal SpendingEmployment Income and Expenses
Expand Work Requirements Increase Average income would change
little or decrease; more people
would have very low income
Decrease
Reduce Work Requirements Decrease Average income would change
little or increase; fewer people
would have very low income
Increase
Expand Work Supports Increase Increase income and decrease
expenses
Increase
Reduce Work Supports Decrease
Decrease income and increase
expenses Decrease
Source: Congressional Budget Oce.
Work supports consist of subsidized child care and workforce development services, such as job-search assistance, job training, and subsidized employment.
The eects of a particular option would depend on its details.
Chapter1: An Overview of Work
Requirements, Work Supports, and
Means-Tested Programs
e federal government has many programs that provide
benets to help people who have relatively low income.
Such means-tested programs—some of which are admin-
istered jointly with the states—help the people who
receive those benets obtain goods and services that they
might not otherwise be able to aord. ree of those
programs are Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
(TANF), which funds monthly cash payments along
with many other services; the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program (SNAP), which assists people in
purchasing food; and Medicaid, which provides health
insurance.
Although the people served by those programs dier,
they generally have cash income near or below the
poverty line (see Table 1-1). Most families in TANF,
for instance, are headed by single mothers who have no
education beyond high school; despite the cash pay-
ments they receive from the program, they have very
low cash income—in many cases, it is so low that they
are considered to be in deep poverty. Income for SNAP
and Medicaid recipients is still low but not as low, and a
greater share of adults in those programs are married or
childless. (In addition, many of those adults are elderly
or disabled.)
In 2019, TANF provided cash payments of about $500a
month, on average, to participating families consisting
of an able-bodied parent and two children—an amount
equal to roughly 30percent of the poverty threshold.
SNAP provided a monthly food allowance of $372, on
average.
1
Average government spending on health care
for such a family in Medicaid was higher—at roughly
$800per month—but was concentrated among recipi-
ents with severe medical conditions.
1. e maximum SNAP benet increased by slightly more than
20 percent in October 2021. In contrast, TANF benets have
not risen recently in most states and are unlikely to substantially
increase in the future because federal funding for that program is
not scheduled to rise.
By design, benet amounts in TANF and SNAP decline
rapidly as participants’ earnings increase. at structure
can create an incentive for participants to work less,
although additional tax credits can oset a substantial
portion of that decline.
2
e decrease in benets tends
to be largest for families in TANF, who receive about
50cents less in cash payments for each additional dollar
they earn.
Work Requirements and Work
Supports in Recent Years
To encourage participants in TANF, SNAP, and
Medicaid to work, policymakers have added require-
ments to those programs. To receive benets, participants
must demonstrate that they are working or preparing
to work. Most adults in TANF are required to work
or participate in related activities, such as searching or
training for a job. A far smaller portion of adults in
SNAP are subject to such a requirement: Many SNAP
recipients are elderly or disabled and thus not expected
to work, and the requirement is not imposed on house-
holds that include dependent children. Medicaid does
not have work requirements, although Arkansas imposed
a work requirement on some childless adults who receive
Medicaid benets in 2018. (Several other states began
implementing work requirements for Medicaid recip-
ients, but Arkansas was the only state that terminated
Medicaid benets because of insucient employment.)
3
To make work more feasible and protable, the fed-
eral government provides funds (often directly to the
2. For more details, see Congressional Budget Oce, Eective
Marginal Tax Rates for Low- and Moderate-Income Workers in
2016 (November 2015), www.cbo.gov/publication/50923.
3. e Trump Administration encouraged states to apply for
waivers that would allow them to impose work requirements
on Medicaid recipients and then approved the applications
of 10 states. However, the Biden Administration rescinded
those approvals before most of the states had implemented the
proposed requirements.
6 WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
states) for work supports, such as subsidized child care
and workforce development services. ose services
are primarily funded by the Child Care Development
Fund (CCDF), Title 1 of the Workforce Innovation and
Opportunity Act (WIOA), and TANF. (All those fund-
ing sources focus assistance on people with low income,
although not exclusively on TANF, SNAP, and Medicaid
recipients.)
In 2019, the CCDF funded $8billion of subsidized
child care; by providing state-run care for dependent
children, those programs enabled the parents to work,
train, or search for a job.
4
at same year, Title 1 of
WIOA funded $5billion of workforce development
services, including job-search assistance, job training,
and subsidized employment. TANF provided $3billion
for subsidized child care and $3billion for workforce
development services in 2019. Other programs that
provide work supports to families in TANF, SNAP, and
Medicaid and that also aect people’s incentives to work
(such as Head Start, the child tax credit, and the earned
income tax credit, or EITC) are beyond the scope of
4. e Congress temporarily increased CCDF funding in 2020 and
2021 in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
this report.
5
(CBO used 2019as a proxy for what work
requirements and supports will look like after the public
health emergency declaration related to the coronavirus
pandemic is lifted.)
Changes to Work Requirements and
Work Supports During the 1990s
e most signicant changes to employment of partici-
pants in means-tested programs occurred in the 1990s,
when work requirements and work supports were sub-
stantially expanded for many participants. e changes
were implemented through a series of executive actions
followed by enactment of the Personal Responsibility
and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA)
in 1996. ose legislative changes are collectively referred
to as welfare reform.
5. Head Start provides free care and education for the young
children of parents with low income. e EITC was designed
to encourage people to work by providing a refundable tax
credit that initially increases as earnings rise. e child tax credit
also encourages work in the same way (although it temporarily
stopped functioning as a work support in 2021 because the
American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 made it available to all
families with qualifying children regardless of their earnings).
Table 1-1 .
Characteristics of Selected Means-Tested Programs, 2019
Recipient Households
Headed by Single Parents
(Percent)
Typical Benet for a Parent and
Two Children (2019 dollars)
Highest Monthly
Income Eligible
a
Average Monthly
Benet
Change in Benet per
Dollar of Earnings
TANF
b
66 1,138 504 -0.50
SNAP 25 2,252 372 -0.24
Medicaid
c
25 2,453 800 Small
Source: Congressional Budget Oce, using data from the Urban Institute and the Department of Health and Human Services.
See www.cbo.gov/publication/57702#data.
In 2019, the federal poverty threshold for a family of three (a single parent and two children) was $1,716 per month.
SNAP = Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; TANF = Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
a. These amounts are gross income limits for initial eligibility, which typically disregard some earnings and other sources of income. Applicants must also meet a
net income standard, which further restricts the eligibility of people who do not have much income that qualifies for exclusion.
b. CBO used benefits in Washington to represent TANF benefits because that state has an income threshold, average benefit, and relationship between benefits
and earnings that are close to the average of all states.
c. Medicaid benefits are measured in terms of the payments that federal and state governments make for the medical care of recipients. In most states,
Medicaid benefits do not change as earnings increase until families reach the eligibility threshold. At that point, families lose eligibility for Medicaid but can
get heavily subsidized insurance through the marketplaces established under the Aordable Care Act.
7CHAPTER 1: AN OVERVIEW WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS
Before those changes were implemented, the government
provided cash payments to qualifying recipients through
Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC). Into
the early 1990s, that program had only minimal work
requirements. From 1993 through 1996, most states
imposed their own work requirements on AFDC partici-
pants by using waivers provided by the Bush and Clinton
Administrations. In 1997, as a result of PRWORA,
TANF replaced AFDC. For a family to receive cash pay-
ments from TANF, all able-bodied parents in it generally
must participate in work-related activities. PRWORA
also imposed a work requirement on able-bodied adults
without dependents in SNAP.
Welfare reform substantially increased the amount of
work supports available to participants in means-tested
programs. PRWORA consolidated four child care
assistance programs into the CCDF and added $1bil-
lion in funding. (All gures are in 2019dollars.) It also
allowed states to reallocate TANF funding from cash
payments to work supports and other services. e states
have used that discretion to drastically change the types
of assistance TANF provides. In 1996, for example,
about 84percent (or $31billion) of the federal and
state funding for the programs that preceded TANF
was spent on recurring cash payments, whereas about
5percent (or $2billion) was spent on work supports (see
Figure 1-1). By 2019, states had allocated about 51per-
cent (or $14billion) of TANF funding to work supports.
In addition, states reallocated funding for recurring cash
payments to a wide array of other services, leaving only
about 23percent (or $7billion) of TANF funding for
those recurring cash payments in 2019.
6
Welfare reform coincided with a large increase in the
EITC, which also supports work. e Omnibus Budget
Reconciliation Act of 1993roughly tripled the maxi-
mum credit for families with two or more children and
roughly doubled the maximum credit for families with
one child. ose increases were phased in from 1994
through 1996. In addition, policymakers created the
6. States spent the remaining 26 percent of TANF funding on
a broad array of other services, including initiatives to reduce
out-of-wedlock pregnancies, encourage two-parent families, and
support the foster care system.
Figure 1-1 .
Spending for TANF and the Programs That Preceded It, by Type of Assistance
Percentage of Total Spending
0
25
50
75
100
1995 1998 2001 2004 2007 2010 2013 2016 2019
Other Services
TANF replaces AFDC
Recurring Cash
Assistance
Work Supports
Data source: Department of Health and Human Services. See www.cbo.gov/publication/57702#data.
Before the creation of TANF in 1997, AFDC distributed recurring cash assistance, the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training program provided work support,
and the Emergency Assistance program supplied other services for low-income families.
Costs to administer the program and monitor compliance with eligibility rules are distributed proportionally among the three types of assistance.
AFDC = Aid to Families With Dependent Children; TANF = Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
States used the flexibility
provided by TANF to
shift funding from cash
assistance to work
supports, including
subsidized child care.
8 WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
child tax credit in 1998. at credit was available to few
working families with low income before 2001, however.
Changes in Federal Spending and
Enrollment
Over the past few decades, federal spending on SNAP
and Medicaid has increased substantially, whereas
spending on AFDC/TANF has fallen drastically (see
Figure 1-2). In 1989, the federal government spent
$63billion on Medicaid, compared with roughly
$20billion each on SNAP (which was known as the
Food Stamp program at that time) and AFDC. (Again,
all gures are in 2019dollars.)
Medicaid spending exceeded spending on the other
programs in 1989largely because health care coverage
was much more costly than other benets, a trend that
has persisted. Spending per enrollee and the number of
enrollees in Medicaid have increased substantially since
1989, bringing the program’s total federal spending to
$409billion in 2019(in addition to the $221billion
states spent on the program in that year).
Federal spend-
ing on SNAP has also increased (to $60billion in 2019),
driven mostly by a rise in the number of recipients.
7
For
Medicaid and SNAP, funding has been adjusted over
7. In 2019, states spent $4 billion on administrative costs for SNAP.
Figure 1-2 .
Federal Spending for Selected Means-Tested and Work Support Programs
Billions of 2019 Dollars
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 2007 2010 2013 2016 2019
0
5
10
15
1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 2007 2010 2013 2016 2019
SNAP
Medicaid
AFDC/TANF
a
Means-Tested Programs
Work Support Programs
CCDF
a
WIOA
a
Over the past few decades,
federal spending on SNAP
and Medicaid has increased
substantially, whereas
spending on AFDC/TANF
has fallen from $20 billion
to $16 billion. The CCDF and
WIOA have each provided
about $5 billion per year in
work supports.
Data source: Congressional Budget Oce. See www.cbo.gov/publication/57702#data.
Work supports are funded by the CCDF (subsidized child care), WIOA (workforce development services), and TANF (subsidized child care and workforce
development services). The transfers that states make from TANF to the CCDF are only included as spending on TANF. Amounts for WIOA are appropriations
because data on spending were not available.
CCDF = Child Care Development Fund; SNAP = Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; TANF = Temporary Assistance for Needy Families; WIOA = Workforce
Innovation and Opportunity Act.
a. Includes spending on predecessors: the Child Care Development Block Grant for the Child Care Development Fund, the Workforce Innovation Act and the Job
Training Partnership Act for the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, and Aid to Families With Dependent Children for Temporary Assistance for Needy
Families. The WIOA and its predecessors funded a wide range of programs.
9CHAPTER 1: AN OVERVIEW WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS
the years so that benets are available to everyone who
applies for and qualies for the programs (see Box 1-1).
Spending on SNAP has also uctuated because of
changes in food prices and how those changes aect the
benets provided.
Funding for TANF, CCDF, and WIOA is handled
dierently. Lawmakers furnish a specic amount of
money for those programs each year, which might not be
sucient to provide benets to all qualied applicants.
Since TANF was implemented in 1997, lawmakers have
not increased the nominal amount of the state family
assistance grant, which provides states with most of
their funding for the program; that value has been and
remains at about $16.5billion. Because the amount
has not been raised to account for ination, in eect
the value of the program’s funding has fallen by about
30percent since 1997.
8
(To receive all that funding,
states are required to spend a certain minimum amount
of their own funds on the program. at amount is also
8. e decline in the ination-adjusted value of funding for TANF
exceeds the decline in the value of spending for the program
because several states did not spend all the funding that they
received in the program’s rst two years.
not adjusted for ination; it has been and remains at
about $10billion.) Lawmakers have increased funding
for CCDF and WIOA on multiple occasions. ose
nominal increases have elevated the ination-adjusted
value of CCDF and approximately maintained it for
WIOA.
Enrollment in Medicaid and SNAP has risen substan-
tially over the past three decades, but enrollment in
AFDC/TANF has plummeted (see Figure 1-3). In 1989,
Medicaid and SNAP had about 20million recipients
each in an average month, and about 10million peo-
ple received cash payments through AFDC. Over the
subsequent 30years, enrollment has changed for each
program.
•
Medicaid. Enrollment has skyrocketed as lawmakers
have repeatedly expanded eligibility for the program,
including 2014’s expansion under the Aordable
Care Act. e number of Medicaid recipients has
roughly tripled since 1989, reaching 75million (or
about one-quarter of the U.S. population) during an
average month in 2019.
Box 1-1 .
How Are Means-Tested Programs Funded?
Means-tested programs are funded in various ways. Lawmak-
ers furnish a specific amount of money for Temporary Assis-
tance for Needy Families (TANF), which is primarily provided
in the form of a block grant. The state family assistance grant,
which totals about $16.5billion, has accounted for 95percent
of TANF’s federal funding in most years. In recent years, the
contingency fund has provided around $600million in addi-
tional funding.
1
Funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
(SNAP) is handled dierently. The amount of money appropri-
ated for SNAP each year is intended to cover the cost of pro-
viding benefits to all people who apply for and are eligible for
the program. If the appropriated amount does not cover those
costs, lawmakers would need to appropriate additional funds,
1. The contingency fund is a mechanism that can increase the amount of TANF
funding available to states that are experiencing economic downturns. For
additional details on the funding of TANF, see Congressional Budget Oce,
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families: Spending and Policy Options
(January 2015), www.cbo.gov/publication/49887.
or the Administration would have to cut benefits. There has not
been any need to use supplemental appropriations or to imple-
ment any reduction in benefits in recent years. (Supplemental
appropriations were last provided about 30years ago.)
Medicaid is an entitlement, which means that federal funding
for medical services provided to eligible individuals is open-
ended. Funding for the program adjusts automatically as
enrollment or costs per enrollee change.
All three programs are jointly financed by the federal govern-
ment and state governments. To varying degrees, states fund a
portion of the services provided through TANF, SNAP, and Med-
icaid. TANF has a maintenance-of-eort requirement, which is
designed to limit the extent to which federal funding displaces
money that state governments would otherwise have spent on
the program. In contrast, states cover a share of the adminis-
trative costs for SNAP, which include employment and training
services. For Medicaid, states cover a share of the costs of the
services provided by the program in addition to a share of the
administrative costs.
10 WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
•
SNAP. Participation rose substantially in the 2000s,
primarily as a result of outreach initiatives. In general,
participation in the program tends to uctuate, rising
during and after recessions and diminishing when the
unemployment rate is low.
9
•
TANF. Participation has dropped drastically
since the onset of welfare reform, having fallen
by 85percent from 1993 to 2019. Some of that
decrease can be attributed to rising earnings among
single mothers, but it primarily has been driven
by declining participation among families whose
income is low enough for them to qualify for the
9. For more details on how participation in SNAP has changed over
the years, see Congressional Budget Oce, e Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program (April 2012), www.cbo.gov/
publication/43173.
program. PRWORA contributed to the decline in
the participation rate through the changes it made to
AFDC/TANF.
10
10. Since before 1997, many states have not increased the nominal
value of the maximum payment available in TANF, even though
the rising cost of living has eroded the value of that payment
by about 30 percent. A growing number of income-eligible
families appears to nd those payments an inadequate incentive
to go through the process of demonstrating eligibility for the
program—a process made more onerous by the imposition of
the work requirements. See Zachary Parolin, “Decomposing
the Decline of Cash Assistance in the United States, 1993 to
2016,” Demography, vol. 58, no. 3 (April 2021), pp. 1119–1141,
https://doi.org/10.1215/00703370-9157471. PRWORA has
contributed to states’ not maintaining the purchasing power of
benets by converting the funding mechanism into a grant of
constant nominal value and by allowing states to divert most of
that money from cash payments to a wide array of other services.
Figure 1-3 .
Participation in Selected Means-Tested and Work Support Programs
Millions of People
0
20
40
60
80
1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 2007 2010 2013 2016 2019
SNAP
Medicaid
TANF
a
CCDF
Even though enrollment
in Medicaid and SNAP
has risen greatly over the
past three decades, the
number of people receiving
recurring cash payments
has plummeted.
Data source: Congressional Budget Oce. See www.cbo.gov/publication/57702#data.
Data for the CCDF were not available before 1998. CBO did not compile participation data for the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act because
participation in the programs it funds can range from a brief self-directed job search to a full year of intensive job training with income support.
CCDF = Child Care Development Fund; SNAP = Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; TANF = Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
a. Consists of recipients of recurring cash assistance and includes participants in its predecessor, Aid to Families With Dependent Children.
Chapter2: Eects of Work Requirements
on People’s Employment and Income
e eects of work requirements vary among partici-
pants in dierent means-tested programs. Most of the
research conducted on those eects has focused on work
requirements in the Temporary Assistance for Needy
Families program and its predecessor, Aid to Families
With Dependent Children, in the 1990s, when wel-
fare reform greatly altered those programs. Evidence of
the eects of work requirements in the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid is more
limited.
Overall, available evidence indicates that the eects of
work requirements on employment and income probably
dier among the three programs.
1
In addition, the gain
in employment among program participants who are
subject to work requirements is probably oset in part
by temporary reductions in employment among people
who are not subject to the requirements.
2
e analysis
in this chapter is mostly based on data from the annual
1. is report focuses on changes in employment and income
within the standard period used for the Congressional budget
process, which extended through 2031 when this report
was prepared. Evidence of the longer-term eects of work
requirements and supports is limited, although research
indicates that access to SNAP benets during childhood tends
to increase earnings in adulthood. See Marianne P. Bitler
and eodore F. Figinski, Long-Run Eects of Food Assistance:
Evidence From the Food Stamp Program (August 2019),
https://tinyurl.com/2p974kdj (PDF, 9.2 MB). us, work
requirements that terminate benets for families with children
might reduce their earnings later in life.
2. Most of the research on unemployment insurance indicates
that policies that increase employment by encouraging people
to search for a job decrease employment among people not in
the program. Such spillovers are probably rarer when jobs are
plentiful, and those studies were conducted during periods
of high unemployment. For example, see Ioana Marinescu,
“e General Equilibrium Impacts of Unemployment
Insurance: Evidence From a Large Online Job Board,”
Journal of Public Economics, vol. 150 (June 2017), pp. 14–29,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2017.02.012.
supplement to the Census Bureau’s Current Population
Survey, so the numbers provided are for calendar years.
TANF
Nationwide, most adults in TANF are required to
participate in work-related activities. Specically, the
federal government requires a certain percentage of
able-bodied parents of children receiving monthly cash
payments—50percent, before adjustments are made—to
either have sucient hours of employment or participate
in approved activities that could lead to employment,
such as vocational training. Any state that does not meet
that work standard risks having its federal funding for
the program reduced, so states typically decrease or ter-
minate a family’s benets if the parent’s work hours are
not sucient. Many states have chosen to impose more
stringent work requirements even when they do not
appear to be at risk of violating the work standard.
In general, those work requirements have increased
employment, which has substantially boosted the income
of some single mothers.
3
(Most TANF recipients are
in families headed by single mothers.) e number of
people receiving cash payments in TANF has declined
by about 85percent since the mid-1990s, however, and
many single mothers have very low income because they
are not working or receiving assistance. (is analysis
focuses on parents who do not receive disability benets,
because they are most likely to be subject to the work
requirements.)
Employment
Most TANF families are headed by single mothers with
no education beyond high school. Employment among
that group rose substantially in the 1990s, in part
3. Initially, AFDC only provided benets to single mothers or the
wives of men who were unable to work. Eligibility was extended
to single fathers and families with two able-bodied parents before
the transition to TANF. However, participation in the programs
has remained low among those groups.
12 WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
because of the widespread imposition of work require-
ments. In the years leading up to welfare reform, single
women without education beyond high school were
far less likely to be employed if they had a child (see
Figure 2-1).
4
From 1993 to 2000, though, the employ-
ment rate for less-educated single mothers increased by
16percentage points (rising from 52percent to 68per-
cent), whereas the employment rate of their childless
counterparts increased by only 4percentage points.
During those years, many states added work require-
ments to AFDC (from 1993 to 1996), all states transi-
tioned from AFDC to TANF (in 1997), and states that
did not have work requirements already in place started
imposing them in TANF (from 1997 to 1999).
Although work requirements accounted for some of the
16percentage-point increase in employment from 1993
to 2000, most of the increase was probably the result of
4. Families of women without dependents are not eligible for
cash payments from TANF. Because such childless women are
largely unaected by TANF, they are used as proxies for how the
employment and income of single mothers without education
beyond high school would have changed in the absence of welfare
reform.
other policy changes (see Box 2-1). Experimental evalu-
ations conducted in AFDC waiver programs during the
1990s indicate that work requirements similar to those in
TANF, when combined with increases in work supports,
increased the employment rate by about 5percentage
points over ve years.
5
TANF’s work requirements have continued to boost
employment for the single parents who have entered the
program in recent years, according to the limited evi-
dence that is available. Since 2000, the employment rate
of single mothers without education beyond high school
has remained relatively steady, moving in tandem with
5. e experimental evaluations compared recipients who were
randomly assigned to a combination of work requirements,
intensive job-search assistance, and additional subsidized
child care with recipients of the standard array of assistance.
For a summary of the ndings of those evaluations, see Gayle
Hamilton and others, National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work
Strategies (submitted by Manpower Demonstration Research
Corporation to the Department of Health and Human Services,
December 2001), p. 86, https://tinyurl.com/2p89s5ad. e
Congressional Budget Oce estimated the employment eects
from evaluations of programs that focused on labor force
attachment because that is TANF’s focus.
Figure 2-1 .
Employment Rates for Single Women With No Education Beyond High School,
by Presence of Children
Percent
0
20
40
60
80
1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 2007 2010 2013 2016 2019
With Children
Without Children
The employment rate
for less-educated single
mothers—the primary group
served by Aid to Families
With Dependent Children
and Temporary Assistance
for Needy Families—rose
substantially in the 1990s
after work requirements
were added to the cash
assistance programs
and work supports were
increased.
Data source: Census Bureau, Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey, from IPUMS-USA. See www.cbo.gov/
publication/57702#data.
The data are by calendar year and are limited to unmarried women between the ages of 18 and 61 who have no postsecondary education, are not students, and
are not receiving disability benefits. The employment rates are for March of the specified year.
13CHAPTER2: EFFECTS OF WORK REQUIREMENTS ON PEOPLE’S EMPLOYMENT AND INCOME WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS
the rate of their childless counterparts. But the changes
to work requirements have been gradual enough that
their eects on employment are obscured by 20years of
changes in the economy and other labor market policies.
6
To bolster the available evidence, the Congressional
Budget Oce analyzed Alabama’s extension of its work
requirement to parents of young children and found
that it increased their employment rate by 11percentage
6. e Urban Institute’s welfare rules database indicates that more
states have tightened work requirements than have loosened
them. See Urban Institute, “Welfare Rules Databook,” https://
wrd.urban.org/wrd/databook.cfm (accessed May 31, 2022).
points.
7
at increase is similar in size to the increase of
10 percentage points that occurred during the rst year
7. Alabama expanded the number of people subject to TANF’s work
requirement when it stopped providing exemptions to parents with
a child between the ages of 6 months and 11 months. In CBO’s
estimation, that expansion increased the employment rate among
participants who were newly subject to the work requirement by
about 4 percentage points in the year following their entry into
TANF. Because the requirement only applied to parents when their
child was between the ages of 6 months and 11 months, though,
participants were newly subject to the work requirement for only
about half of the rst year. Had those participants never been
subject to the work requirement before the expansion and became
subject to it for the full year after the expansion, their employment
rate would have increased by about 9 percentage points in the rst
year after entering the program, CBO estimates. For more details
about the methods CBO used for this analysis, see Appendix B.
Box 2-1 .
How Policy Changes Made to Means-Tested Programs During the 1990s
Aected Single Mothers’ Employment
To encourage employment and limit cash payments, policymak-
ers in the mid-1990s began making changes to the program that
would become Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
Probably the most well-known change was the imposition of work
requirements, which made the receipt of benefits contingent
on working or engaging in work-related activities. Those work
requirements are one of several components of TANF that con-
tributed to the rise in employment among single mothers in the
late 1990s. Other contributing changes include the following:
•
A five-year lifetime limit on TANF’s cash payments.
Researchers have found evidence that the five-year lifetime
limit on cash payments contributed to the rise in employment,
even though no families could have reached that limit by
2000. Those researchers argue that the limit caused some
families to leave TANF for employment earlier so that they
could save some of their potential time in the program in case
of future hardship.
1
•
A weakened disincentive to work. Benefits drop more slowly
as earnings increase under TANF than under its predecessor
program, Aid to Families With Dependent Children. Many
1. Francesca Mazzolari, “Welfare Use When Approaching the Time Limit,”
Journal of Human Resources, vol. 42, no. 3 (Summer 2007),
pp. 596–618, https://doi.org/10.3368/jhr.XLII.3.596; and Jerey Grogger,
“The Eects of Time Limits, the EITC, and Other Policy Changes on
Welfare Use, Work, and Income Among Female-Headed Families,” Review
of Economics and Statistics, vol. 85, no. 2 (May 2003), pp. 394–408,
https://doi.org/10.1162/003465303765299891.
states weakened that disincentive to work by reducing
the benefits available to families without earnings and by
allowing families to keep more of their benefits once their
earnings rose.
2
•
Additional funding for work supports. States shifted some
TANF funds from cash payments to work supports, including
subsidized child care and workforce development services.
Policy changes not directly related to TANF also boosted the
employment of single mothers. Of those changes, increases
in the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) and the earned
income tax credit (EITC) probably contributed the most to their
rise in employment from 1993 to 2000.
3
Lawmakers substantially
increased the EITC in phases from 1994 to 1996, which elevated
the compensation that parents received for working and thus
boosted their incentive to work. Furthermore, lawmakers doubled
spending for the CCDF from 1993 to 2000; the additional sub-
sidized child care provided by that increase made employment
more feasible and profitable for some single mothers.
2. Rebecca M. Blank, “Evaluating Welfare Reform in the United States,” Journal
of Economic Literature, vol. 40, no. 4 (December 2002), pp. 1105–1166,
https://doi.org/10.1257/002205102762203576. That study suggests that the
rapid growth of the economy also contributed to the rise in employment.
3. For a description of the research on the eects of the EITC on the
employment of single mothers, see Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach and
Michael R. Strain, Employment Eects of the Earned Income Tax Credit:
Taking the Long View, Working Paper 28041 (National Bureau of Economic
Research, November 2020), www.nber.org/papers/w28041.
14 WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
after parents entered the AFDC waiver experiments.
8
However, the overall size of the increase in employment
was modest because TANF serves far fewer families than
AFDC did.
9
Research on the eects of recent changes to
work requirements made in other states is scant.
Income
Work requirements in TANF have had a small eect on
average income for single mothers. According to studies
from the 1990s, that is because increases in their earn-
ings and in the earned income tax credit roughly equaled
8. See Gayle Hamilton and others, National Evaluation of Welfare-
to-Work Strategies (submitted by Manpower Demonstration
Research Corporation to the Department of Health and Human
Services, December 2001), p. 352, https://tinyurl.com/2p89s5ad.
e employment eects shrank over time. CBO did not
have sucient data to estimate the eect of Alabama’s TANF
expansion over a longer period.
9. In Alabama, TANF served only about 4 percent of single parents
in poverty during an average month in 2018. Nationally, TANF
served about 10 percent of that group, whereas AFDC served
about 77 percent of that group during the years leading up to
enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Reconciliation Act.
reductions in cash payments and food assistance.
10
ose
ndings are consistent with trends in the data showing
that the average cash income of single mothers with no
education beyond high school has generally moved in
parallel with the average for their childless counterparts
over the past 30years (see Figure 2-2).
e eect on the income of single mothers has probably
been uneven, though. In recent years, single mothers
who found work while in TANF saw their cash income
rise to an average of about $1,300per month at the
point they left the program, but mothers who left the
program without a job had very little cash income.
11
Income of Former TANF Recipients Who Found Work.
About half of single mothers are employed when they
leave TANF, enabling some of their families to rise out
of poverty. Studies of families that left TANF in the late
10. See Gayle Hamilton and others, National Evaluation of Welfare-
to-Work Strategies (submitted by Manpower Demonstration
Research Corporation to the Department of Health and Human
Services, December 2001), https://tinyurl.com/2p89s5ad.
11. For details on CBO’s analysis, see Appendix B.
Figure 2-2 .
Average Cash Income for Single Women With No Education Beyond High School,
by Presence of Children
Thousands of 2019 Dollars
0
5
10
15
20
25
1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 2007 2010 2013 2016 2019
With Children
Medicaid
TANF
Without Children
Pretax cash income of
less-educated single
mothers has changed
little, on average, despite
the addition of work
requirements in the 1990s.
Data source: Census Bureau, Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey, from IPUMS-USA. See www.cbo.gov/
publication/57702#data.
The data are by calendar year and are limited to unmarried women between the ages of 18 and 61 who have no postsecondary education, are not students, and
are not receiving disability benefits.
15CHAPTER2: EFFECTS OF WORK REQUIREMENTS ON PEOPLE’S EMPLOYMENT AND INCOME WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS
1990s documented their income in subsequent years.
About half of the families with a working adult had
monthly cash income (in 2019dollars) above $1,716,
which was the poverty threshold for a single parent with
two children in 2019. e primary source of that income
was the parent’s earnings, and some parents had a partner
with substantial earnings as well. Earnings for those fam-
ilies grew modestly in later years, on average.
12
Work requirements have raised the income of employed
single mothers by increasing how quickly they found
a job, which reduced the amount of time they spent
in AFDC/TANF. Between the early stages of welfare
reform in 1993 and PRWORA’s implementation in
1997, the percentage of mothers who had earnings
24months after entering the program rose from about
12. ose ndings come from a summary of studies conducted in
12 states, although data generally were not available for all 12
states. See Gregory Acs and Pamela Loprest, Leaving Welfare:
Employment and Well-Being of Families at Left Welfare in the
Post-Entitlement Era (W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment
Research, 2004), https://doi.org/10.17848/9781417550012.
31percent to about 46percent (see Figure 2-3).
13
at
increase in earnings boosted their income, but some of
the increase was oset by a decline in the cash payments
they received. From 1993 to 1997, the share of families
headed by single mothers who were still receiving cash
payments from AFDC/TANF 24months after entering
the program fell from about 65percent to about 35per-
cent. Over the following years, most single mothers con-
tinued to leave the program within 24months. About
half of those mothers had earnings. For most of them,
the increase in earnings was larger than the reduction in
benets from leaving TANF. In addition, about 25per-
cent of single mothers who had earnings 24months after
entering the program were still receiving cash payments.
Income of Families Without Earnings or Cash
Assistance. About half of single mothers are not
13. Federal law requires states to impose work requirements on
families within their rst 24 months of receiving assistance.
For details, see Appendix A, which compares the changes in
employment and benets for single mothers in SNAP who were
not subject to work requirements.
Figure 2-3 .
Sources of Income for Families of Single Women With Children 24 Months After They
Started Receiving Cash Assistance, by Year
Percentage of Families Receiving Income From the Specified Source
0
20
40
60
80
1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 2007 2010 2013 2016 2019
Employment
AFDC/TANF
After work requirements
were added to cash
assistance programs,
recipients tended to find
employment more quickly
and stop receiving benefits
sooner.
Data source: Survey of Income and Program Participation. See www.cbo.gov/publication/57702#data.
Data are limited to unmarried mothers between the ages of 18 and 61 who received cash assistance from AFDC or TANF, are not students, and are not receiving
disability benefits.
Data are presented only for the years in which the sample size provided sucient precision.
AFDC = Aid to Families With Dependent Children; TANF = Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
16 WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
employed when they stop receiving cash assistance,
and the share of single mothers without earnings or
cash assistance from AFDC/TANF has risen substan-
tially since welfare reform began.
14
Work requirements
have probably contributed to that increase in two
ways: Families that do not meet those requirements are
removed from TANF, and other families are deterred
from entering the program. However, the low levels of
participation in TANF appear to be primarily driven by
other changes made to AFDC/TANF by PRWORA.
14. One study found that TANF’s work requirements led to some
nonworking single mothers’ receiving more cash assistance
through Supplemental Security Income than they would have
through TANF. e prospect of losing TANF benets because
of the work requirements appears to have led some mothers
to undertake the more strenuous application process for SSI,
which generally provides larger monthly payments than TANF.
See Lucie Schmidt and Purvi Sevak, “AFDC, SSI, and Welfare
Reform Aggressiveness: Caseload Reductions Versus Caseload
Shifting,” Journal of Human Resources, vol. 39, no. 3 (Summer
2004), pp. 792–812, https://doi.org/10.3368/jhr.XXXIX.3.792.
Trends in the Data. In the early 1990s, nearly all
less-educated single mothers received recurring cash pay-
ments if they had not worked for an extended period. As
the number of families receiving cash assistance plum-
meted, though, the share of less-educated single mothers
who did not have income from work or AFDC/TANF
rose from close to zero in 1993 to 9percent in 2000,
CBO estimates (see Figure 2-4). Over that period, partic-
ipation in AFDC/TANF declined among those who had
earnings, so the portion of less-educated single moth-
ers who received cash payments fell by about 34per-
centage points in total. In comparison, the portion of
less-educated single mothers who had earnings (whether
they participated in AFDC/TANF or not) increased by
about 14percentage points from 1993 to 2000.
Over the next two decades, the share of less-educated
single mothers who did not have income from work
or TANF continued growing, albeit more gradually.
Reductions in TANF receipt were no longer coun-
tered by substantial increases in employment, leaving
Figure 2-4 .
Sources of Cash Income for Families of Single Women With Children and
With No Education Beyond High School
Percentage of Families
0
20
40
60
80
100
1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 2007 2010 2013 2016 2019
No Work or
AFDC/TANF
AFDC/TANF
But No Work
Work and
AFDC/TANF
Work But No
AFDC/TANF
The portion of single
mothers without income
from cash assistance or
work rose substantially in
the late 1990s and early
2000s and has stayed
elevated since then.
Data sources: Census Bureau, Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey, from IPUMS-USA; Department of Health and Human
Services. See www.cbo.gov/publication/57702#data.
Data are by calendar year and are limited to unmarried mothers between the ages of 18 and 61 who have no postsecondary education, are not students, and
are not receiving disability benefits. The only sources of income considered are the mother’s employment and recurring cash assistance through TANF or its
predecessor, AFDC. Sources of income have been adjusted for errors in reporting.
AFDC = Aid to Families With Dependent Children; TANF = Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
17CHAPTER2: EFFECTS OF WORK REQUIREMENTS ON PEOPLE’S EMPLOYMENT AND INCOME WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS
one-in-seven less-educated single mothers without
income from work or TANF in 2019. (at estimate is
highly uncertain because of imprecision in the underly-
ing data.)
15
Sources of Income. In recent years, most single mothers
without earnings or cash assistance reported being in
deep poverty. ey had little cash income, although they
typically received benets through SNAP to purchase
food. About 39percent of those mothers lived with an
adult who reported working, typically the children’s
(unwed) father. Other mothers reported receiving cash
from people who they did not live with or were not
related to; the most common forms of assistance were
child support (11percent) and help from friends or rel-
atives (11percent). e mothers might understate cash
income from those sources, which could help explain
why single mothers tend to report spending substantially
more income than they report receiving.
16
The Role of Work Requirements. Work requirements
probably increase the number of single mothers with-
out earnings or cash assistance by removing them from
TANF when they are not employed. Work requirements
can aect that number by changing the length of time
nonworking mothers receive assistance and by changing
whether those mothers are employed when they stop
receiving assistance. e expansion of Alabama’s work
requirement in 2018appears to have had little eect on
the latter variable, but it did reduce the length of time
families received assistance by about a month during
the rst year after they entered the program, on average.
us, the work requirement probably caused the number
of families without earnings or cash assistance to increase
modestly. Other research nds evidence of a larger
15. e underreporting of earnings and cash assistance in household
surveys is well established. See Bruce D. Meyer and others,
“e Use and Misuse of Income Data and Extreme Poverty in
the United States,” Journal of Labor Economics, vol. 39, no. S1
(January 2021), pp. S5–S58, https://doi.org/10.1086/711227.
CBO adjusted downward the number of single mothers without
earnings on the basis of inconsistencies between multiple
interviews covering the same years. at adjustment decreased
the estimated number of families without income from work or
AFDC/TANF by 18 percent in 1993; by 2019, the size of that
adjustment had grown to 29 percent. In addition, CBO adjusted
the percentage of single mothers who receive recurring cash
payments so that it matched the administrative data.
16. Bruce D. Meyer and James X. Sullivan, “Changes in the
Consumption, Income, and Well-Being of Single Mother Headed
Families,” American Economic Review, vol. 98, no. 5 (December
2008), https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.98.5.2221.
increase in the number of such families stemming from
a more stringent work requirement implemented when
the labor market was weaker.
17
In addition, the AFDC
waiver experiments showed that work requirements
often increase the number of families in deep poverty,
and deep poverty is common among families without
earnings or cash assistance.
18
Although some single mothers end up disconnected
from employment and cash payments because they are
removed from TANF for not complying with its work
requirements, most are probably disconnected because
they do not apply for TANF or because their application
is rejected. Before welfare reform, most single mothers
whose income and assets were low enough to qualify for
recurring cash payments received that assistance. But
TANF participation among that group has fallen over
the past three decades, from about 80percent to roughly
25percent.
19
Many single mothers with suciently low
income and assets are not entering the program because
they are ineligible for other reasons or because they do
not complete the application process.
Work requirements may have increased the number of
single mothers without earnings or cash assistance by
stopping some of them from enrolling in TANF. Work
requirements can reduce entry into TANF by discour-
aging parents from applying or by causing them to be
ineligible. e expansion of Alabama’s work requirement
does not appear to have had an immediate eect on
the number of families entering the program. Repeated
violation of the work requirement can lead to families’
being ineligible to enter the program for a year, however.
(Ten other states impose ineligibility periods of a year or
more for repeated violations of the work requirement; six
of those states permanently bar families from reentering
the program.) us, TANF’s work requirements proba-
bly reduce entry into the program by mothers without
earnings by removing them from the program when they
are not working and then barring their reentry. However,
17. Tazra Mitchell, LaDonna Pavetti, and Yixuan Huang, Life After
TANF in Kansas: For Most, Unsteady Work and Earnings Below
Half the Poverty Line (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities,
February 2018), https://tinyurl.com/mpxsxkbj.
18. Stephen Freedman and others, National Evaluation of Welfare-
to-Work Strategies (submitted by Manpower Demonstration
Research Corporation to the Department of Health and Human
Services, June 2000), p. 199, https://tinyurl.com/38k9exee.
19. Linda Giannarelli, What Was the TANF Participation Rate in
2016? (Urban Institute, July 2019), https://tinyurl.com/3tny44sc.
18 WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
the low levels of participation in TANF appear to be pri-
marily driven by other changes made to AFDC/TANF
by PRWORA.
20
SNAP
e federal government places two work requirements
on adults in SNAP. First, most able-bodied nonelderly
adults who are not working at least 30hours a week or
caring for a child under age 6must register for work—
that is, notify their state’s employment oce that they
are available to work—and accept a suitable job if one
is oered. Second, able-bodied adults under the age of
50who do not live with dependent children (so-called
ABAWDs, or able-bodied adults without dependents)
are generally limited to 3months of benets in any
36-month period unless they are working at least
80hours per month or in job training.
ABAWDs accounted for 7percent of SNAP recipients
in 2019 and a larger percentage in years when many
localities waived the work requirement.
21
Waiving of the
work requirement—mainly because of adverse economic
conditions—has occurred frequently over the past
14years.
22
is report focuses on the work requirement
for ABAWDs because of the lack of research on the
income and employment of other SNAP recipients who
must register for work.
Employment
e work requirement for ABAWDs slightly increases
the employment of the oldest of the workers who are
subject to it. Most studies of SNAP’s work requirement
compare employment of ABAWDs in their late 40s with
that of able-bodied adults without dependents who are
20. For a summary of the other channels through which PRWORA
has reduced participation, see Zachary Parolin, “Decomposing
the Decline of Cash Assistance in the United States, 1993 to
2016,” Demography, vol. 58, no. 3 (April 2021), pp. 1119–1141,
https://doi.org/10.1215/00703370-9157471.
21. Kathryn Cronquist, Characteristics of Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program Households: Fiscal Year 2019, SNAP-20-
CHAR (submitted by Mathematica Policy Research to the
Department of Labor, March 2021), www.fns.usda.gov/snap/
characteristics-snap-households-fy-2019.
22. e federal government waived the work requirement from April
2009 through September 2010, and waivers remained in eect
in most of the country for a few years after that because of high
unemployment rates. Starting in April 2020, the Families First
Coronavirus Response Act compelled all states to waive the work
requirement by suspending it; that suspension will continue through
the month after the public health emergency declaration is lifted.
just over 49because those two groups are similar in their
age and education but dier in whether they are sub-
ject to the work requirement. Using data for four states
(Colorado, Pennsylvania, Missouri, and Virginia), those
studies estimate that the employment rate is 1 to 4per-
centage points higher among the group of ABAWDs
subject to the requirement.
23
SNAP participants between
the ages of 45 and 49account for only about 15percent
of workers who are subject to the work requirement,
though, so those ndings might not apply more broadly.
SNAP’s work requirement might induce younger
ABAWDs to work more, but it probably boosts employ-
ment less than TANF’s work requirements do. Younger
SNAP recipients might be more likely to seek employ-
ment because they will be ineligible for benets for
more years if they do not (unlike, say, a recipient who
is 48 and thus subject to the work requirement for only
two more years). SNAP’s work requirement is proba-
bly less eective than TANF’s requirement, however,
because most SNAP recipients do not receive intensive
case-management services. ose services, typically pro-
vided one on one by a caseworker, can boost the eec-
tiveness of work requirements by monitoring progress,
assigning work supports, and providing job referrals.
One study of unemployment insurance found that a
40-minute meeting with a caseworker reduced the dura-
tion of unemployment by 5percent, on average.
24
Income
SNAP’s work requirement probably reduces the average
income of ABAWDs by causing many of them to stop
receiving benets. Studies of recipients who are near the
age of 50found that the work requirement reduced the
number of ABAWDs receiving benets by 22percent,
31percent, and 53percent in Pennsylvania, Missouri,
and Virginia, respectively. (e work requirement did
not appear to change the number of ABAWDs receiv-
ing benets in Colorado.) Most of those ABAWDs
lost SNAP benets because they did not demonstrate
23. Colin Gray and others, Employed in a SNAP? e Impact of
Work Requirements on Program Participation and Labor Supply,
Social Science Research Network working paper (August 2020),
http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3676722; and Laura Wheaton
and others, e Impact of SNAP Able-Bodied Adults Without
Dependents (ABAWD) Time Limit Reinstatement in Nine States
(Urban Institute, June 2021), https://go.usa.gov/xtYxE.
24. Amelie Schiprowski, “e Role of Caseworkers in
Unemployment Insurance: Evidence From Unplanned Absences,”
Journal of Labor Economics, vol. 38, no. 4 (August 2020),
pp. 1189–1225, https://doi.org/10.1086/706092.
19CHAPTER2: EFFECTS OF WORK REQUIREMENTS ON PEOPLE’S EMPLOYMENT AND INCOME WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS
sucient participation in work-related activities. at
reduction in benets appears larger than the increase in
earnings among the smaller percentage of ABAWDs who
worked more because of the work requirement.
SNAP’s work requirement results in many ABAWDs
having very low income because SNAP benets had been
their primary source of income. Most ABAWDs who
stop receiving benets from SNAP have few or no other
sources of income, and many of them are homeless.
25
Only about 30percent of ABAWDs have any earnings—
and none of those people are eligible to receive cash
payments through TANF.
26
(In contrast, most TANF
recipients who lose cash payments because of noncom-
pliance with the program’s work requirements still receive
full SNAP benets because they are not ABAWDs.)
Medicaid
Although federal law does not impose any work require-
ments on Medicaid recipients, states have sought waivers
to do so. In 2018, the Trump Administration began
approving requests from states to waive the entitle-
ment to Medicaid in order to experiment with work
requirements. Most of the waivers required ABAWDs
to perform work-related activities for at least 80hours
a month to retain their health insurance coverage. e
Administration approved waivers for 11states, but
implementation has been halted for various reasons: e
courts set aside four of the approvals, six waivers have
not been implemented, and the only state that imple-
mented a work requirement in 2020suspended it after
two months because of the pandemic. (In 2021, the
Biden Administration rescinded all the approvals.)
Employment
States’ limited experience with work requirements in
Medicaid indicates that they cause a substantial portion
of adults who are not exempt from them to lose cover-
age, and they appear to have little eect on employment.
Only Arkansas had a work requirement in place for more
than a few months—from June2018 to March2019,
25. Laura Wheaton and others, e Impact of SNAP Able-Bodied
Adults Without Dependents (ABAWD) Time Limit Reinstatement
in Nine States (Urban Institute, June 2021), https://go.usa.gov/
xtYxE.
26. Kathryn Cronquist, Characteristics of Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program Households: Fiscal Year 2019, SNAP-20-
CHAR (submitted by Mathematica Policy Research to the
Department of Labor, March 2021), www.fns.usda.gov/snap/
characteristics-snap-households-fy-2019.
when it was set aside by the courts. Under that require-
ment, ABAWDs lost Medicaid coverage if they did
not document sucient hours spent in work-related
activities for three months in the same year. Over the
sevenmonths of 2018that the requirement was in eect,
about 23percent of Medicaid recipients who were sub-
ject to it lost coverage for failure to comply.
Researchers who designed and conducted a phone survey
targeted at measuring employment among Medicaid
recipients in Arkansas after the work requirement
took eect found mixed results. e employment rate
decreased slightly using one statistical approach and
increased a bit using another approach; in both cases,
though, the sample size was too small to rule out no
change or a sizable change.
27
Income and Expenses
Arkansas’ work requirement probably reduced families’
resources overall because it caused a large reduction in
Medicaid coverage. In addition, the number of hours
that recipients worked did not appear to increase, which
suggests that their earnings did not rise. e targeted
phone survey used by researchers to measure employ-
ment indicates that the work requirement substantially
increased the number of adults who were uninsured by
terminating their Medicaid coverage. Instead of having
most of their medical care covered by Medicaid, many of
the aected adults had to pay for most of it themselves.
e work requirement appears to have roughly doubled
the portion of those adults who reported having serious
problems paying their medical bills, according to the
researchers.
28
e combination of a large reduction in Medicaid receipt
and a small or negligible eect on employment among
adults subject to the work requirement might have been
driven by two factors. First, many employed participants
might have been unaware of the requirement, or they
might have found it onerous to demonstrate compliance.
e targeted survey indicates that about 35percent of
27. Benjamin D. Sommers and others, “Medicaid Work
Requirements—Results From the First Year in Arkansas,” New
England Journal of Medicine, vol. 381, no. 11 (September 2019),
pp. 1073–1082, http://dx.doi.org/10.1056/NEJMsr1901772.
28. Benjamin D. Sommers and others, “Medicaid Work
Requirements in Arkansas: Two-Year Impacts on Coverage,
Employment, and Aordability of Care,” Health Aairs,
vol. 39, no. 9 (September 2020), pp. 1522–1530,
https://doi.org/10.1377/hltha.2020.00538.
20 WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
Medicaid recipients in the age range subject to the work
requirement were not aware of it. Second, other stud-
ies have shown that even modest increases in the eort
required to demonstrate eligibility for means-tested
benets can cause large declines in the number of recip-
ients.
29
A lack of awareness and burdensome reporting
29. Manasi Deshpande and Yue Li, “Who Is Screened Out?
Application Costs and the Targeting of Disability Programs,”
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, vol. 11, no. 4
(November 2019), pp. 213–248, https://doi.org/10.1257/
pol.20180076.
could explain why only about 9percent of Medicaid
recipients who needed to demonstrate compliance led a
report. (In most cases, the administrators of the program
were able to verify that recipients were in compliance
without contacting them.)
Chapter3: Eects of Work Supports on
People’s Employment and Income
Two of the most common ways that the federal govern-
ment supports work among participants in Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families, the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program, and Medicaid are by
subsidizing child care and funding workforce devel-
opment services. ose work supports can boost the
employment of recipients and thus increase their income.
Employment gains among program participants might
hold down employment among people who do not have
access to those work supports, though, because they
compete for the same types of jobs.
Subsidized Child Care
e federal government primarily funds subsidized child
care through the Child Care Development Fund, which
the states administer. e CCDF provides subsidies to
low-income families who are working or preparing to
work. Recipients pay about 5percent of their income
for child care, on average, and the subsidy covers the
remainder.
e most compelling research on the eects of subsi-
dized child care on employment and income comes
from a study of Child Care Development Block Grant
recipients. at study’s ndings can be extrapolated to
recipients in TANF, SNAP, and Medicaid. Subsidized
child care confers two main benets: It increases earn-
ings by enabling recipients to work more, and it boosts
consumption by reducing the amount recipients spend
on child care.
Employment
Subsidized child care has boosted the employment of
low-income single parents, who represent about 80per-
cent of CCDF recipients. Most data do not indicate the
direction of causality—that is, whether people are work-
ing because they are receiving a subsidy or receiving a
subsidy because they are working. e latter explanation
probably prevails often in states that have employment
as an eligibility requirement, but the subsidies boost
employment in other instances.
One study addresses that issue by recording whether sin-
gle mothers were working before they applied for subsi-
dized child care. e researchers found that the subsidies
provided by the Child Care Development Block Grant—
now a major component of the CCDF—increased the
employment rate of single mothers with very low income
by 8 to 25percentage points.
1
at research is based on a
1988survey of single mothers in Kentucky who did not
have to work to receive cash payments.
e Congress boosted CCDF funding in March2018,
allowing many states to substantially decrease the
length of their waitlists for subsidized child care.
2
By
February2020, there was one wait-listed child for every
12children who received a CCDF subsidy.
3
Additional
funding for subsidized child care would probably benet
participants in Medicaid and SNAP and increase their
employment more than it would assist participants in
TANF. at is because most states already give priority
for child care subsidies to parents who are subject to
TANF’s work requirements.
Recent boosts to CCDF funding probably have increased
employment less than might be suggested by the
Kentucky study. As that study demonstrates, applicants
are more likely to work once they get through the waitlist
for subsidized child care, but the potential to increase
employment by reducing waitlists has diminished because
the lists have gotten shorter. Shorter waitlists indicate that
fewer parents have been delaying work because child care
subsidies are not available. However, because some states
1. Mark C. Berger and Dan A. Black, “Child Care
Subsidies, Quality of Care, and the Labor Supply of
Low-Income, Single Mothers,” Review of Economics and
Statistics, vol. 74, no. 4 (November 1992), pp. 635–642,
https://doi.org/10.2307/2109377.
2. Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018, Public Law 115-141.
3. ose ndings are CBO’s analysis of data from Karen Schulman,
On the Precipice: State Child Care Assistance Policies 2020
(National Women’s Law Center, May 2021), https://tinyurl.com/
ycksszu2 (PDF, 2.4 MB).
22 WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
continue to use increases in CCDF funding to reduce
their waitlists, such funding continues to boost employ-
ment, although the eect is probably small.
In addition to reducing waitlists, states have responded
to the recent boost in CCDF funding by expanding
eligibility to families with higher income and by reduc-
ing the amount recipients pay out of pocket for child
care. Research indicates that such policies do not increase
employment as much as subsidies that are provided to
single parents with very low income.
4
Income and Expenses
Subsidized child care substantially increases the resources
available to some low-income families. It boosts earnings
for some single parents by enabling them to work, and it
bolsters consumption for some parents who would have
worked anyway by reducing the amount they spend on
child care.
e average subsidy funded by CCDF is about $500per
month, which is about one-third of the average monthly
income for a single parent and child at the poverty
threshold. e size of the average increase in resources
from subsidized child care is much harder to determine
and highly uncertain because researchers have provided
little indication of how many recipients would have
purchased child care in the absence of the subsidy. In
many instances, the subsidy probably had little eect on
a family’s resources because it replaced care that would
have been provided by a relative for little or no charge.
About 68percent of working single parents who were in
TANF, SNAP, or Medicaid received free informal care in
an average week from 2013 through 2016, typically from
a child’s grandparent.
5
In contrast, only about 23percent
of families in those programs were paying for child care
4. e cost of unsubsidized child care is less likely to deter
higher-income parents from working. A randomized controlled
trial conducted on families near the poverty line found that a
substantial reduction in the percentage of income recipients
had to pay for child care had no eect on their employment or
earnings. See Charles Michalopoulos, Eects of Reducing Child
Care Subsidy Copayments in Washington State, OPRE 2011-2
(submitted by MDRC to the Department of Health and Human
Services, June 2010), https://tinyurl.com/mumukvfk.
5. In the survey, respondents were asked about their child care usage
in a typical week in the fall each year. e amounts cited are
based on CBO’s analysis of data from the Survey of Income and
Program Participation. e analysis was limited to recipients with
a child under age 13; those families account for almost all CCDF
recipients.
without any subsidy during those years, and that share
has probably decreased as a result of the CCDF’s recent
expansions.
Workforce Development Services
is report focuses on three common types of workforce
development services: job-search assistance, job training,
and subsidized employment. Researchers have typically
analyzed how those services aect the employment and
income of TANF recipients and participants in two of
the largest workforce development programs, the Adult
and Dislocated Worker programs. Participants in those
two programs are broadly similar to the able-bodied
nonelderly adults in SNAP and Medicaid in that many
of them have low income, little education, and sporadic
employment.
6
Job-Search Assistance
Intensive job-search assistance increases employment
and income. In the 2010s, the Department of Labor
(DOL) conducted a national experimental evaluation
of the intensive job-search assistance provided through
the Adult and Dislocated Worker programs.
7
In the year
following the receipt of assistance, people who had been
assigned to intensive job-search assistance and counseling
earned about $2,200(or 18percent) more, on average,
than people who had only been given access to online
tools and literature with little direct assistance from sta.
(e experiment did not evaluate the eects of that less
intensive assistance.)
at substantial increase in earnings resulted from a
combination of a higher employment rate and better
paying jobs. e gains from intensive job-search assistance
could be smaller among participants in TANF, SNAP,
and Medicaid because they face more barriers to employ-
ment, such as not having graduated from high school. But
intensive job-search assistance appears to also have boosted
the employment of less-educated recipients in the Aid to
Families With Dependent Children’s experimental evalu-
ations. Intensive job-search assistance was a component of
6. For a description of the characteristics of participants in
the Adult and Dislocated Worker programs, see Kenneth
Fortson and others, Providing Public Workforce Services to
Job Seekers: 30-Month Impact Findings on the WIA Adult
and Dislocated Worker Programs (submitted by Mathematica
Policy Research to the Department of Labor, May 2017),
https://tinyurl.com/2p8kkbvs.
7. Ibid.
23CHAPTER3: EFFECTS OF WORK SUPPORTS ON PEOPLE’S EMPLOYMENT AND INCOME WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS
all the experimental evaluations of AFDC work require-
ments that were found to boost employment.
8
Job Training
Job training provided by the Adult and Dislocated
Worker programs has not been shown to increase partic-
ipants’ employment or earnings. DOL’s national experi-
mental evaluation found that recipients of such training
tended to earn less during the training period than peo-
ple who were provided job-search assistance immediately.
In addition, after the training and job-search assistance
were completed, the earnings of those two groups were
similar, on average. Likewise, experimental evaluations
of AFDC recipients indicate that programs focusing on
immediate job-search assistance generally boost employ-
ment and earnings more than programs that rst provide
vocational training or education.
9
One possible explanation is that the training did not
align well with the demands of local employers. In
DOL’s experiment, only about 40percent of partici-
pants in occupation-specic training found a job in that
occupation.
10
Since DOL conducted its evaluation, the
Congress has made several modications to those pro-
grams that are intended to better align job training with
the needs of local employers.
11
Recent research demonstrates that job training provided
by smaller programs can increase employment and
income when it focuses on occupations that are in high
8. Gayle Hamilton and others, National Evaluation of Welfare-
to-Work Strategies (submitted by Manpower Demonstration
Research Corporation to the Department of Health and Human
Services, December 2001), https://tinyurl.com/2p89s5ad.
9. For a summary of the ndings of many studies on job training,
see Gayle Hamilton, Improving Employment and Earnings for
TANF Recipients, OPRE Brief 6 (Urban Institute, March 2012),
https://tinyurl.com/yc346ddv. For a study that found evidence of
long-term benets from job training, see V. Joseph Hotz, Guido
W. Imbens, and Jacob A. Klerman, “Evaluating the Dierential
Eects of Alternative Welfare-to-Work Training Components:
A Reanalysis of the California GAIN Program,” Journal of
Labor Economics, vol. 24, no. 3 (July 2006), pp. 521–566,
https://doi.org/10.1086/505050.
10. Kenneth Fortson and others, Providing Public Workforce Services
to Job Seekers: 30-Month Impact Findings on the WIA Adult and
Dislocated Worker Programs (report submitted by Mathematica
Policy Research to the Department of Labor, May 2017),
https://tinyurl.com/2p8kkbvs.
11. Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act of 2014, Public Law
113-128, www.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/803.
demand locally and that have the potential for career
advancement.
12
Such programs dier from the Adult and
Dislocated Worker programs in that they are admin-
istered by community-based organizations. Whether
those programs would increase employment and income
if implemented on a national scale is unclear. But the
ndings suggest that the Congress’s recent attempts to
focus job training on the needs of local employers may
have led to federally provided job training that increases
participants’ employment and income.
Subsidized Employment
e federal government provides funding for subsidized
employment to the states, which use it to temporarily
cover some or all of the costs of compensation paid by a
participant’s employer (usually a private rm). at strat-
egy has been used to boost employment during reces-
sions and to help participants with few skills progress
toward unsubsidized employment.
Subsidized employment increases workers’ employment
and earnings, though the gains are usually temporary.
Many recipients of subsidized employment would not
have been employed otherwise, either because jobs
were scarce or because they lacked job skills. e sub-
sidies boosted their income by raising their earnings.
Most studies have found that those gains disappeared
once the subsidies ended.
13
However, an evaluation of
13recent programs found that 6 of them generated more
persistent and substantial increases in earnings for the
aected workers.
14
12. Lawrence F. Katz and others, Why Do Sectoral Employment
Programs Work? Lessons From WorkAdvance, Working Paper 28248
(National Bureau of Economic Research, December 2020),
www.nber.org/papers/w28248.
13. David Butler and others, What Strategies Work for the Hard-
to-Employ? Final Results of the Hard-to-Employ Demonstration
and Evaluation Project and Selected Sites From the Employment
Retention and Advancement Project, OPRE Report 2012-08
(submitted by MDRC to the Department of Health and Human
Services, March 2012), https://tinyurl.com/49d46rxh; and
Erin Jacobs and Dan Bloom, Alternative Employment Strategies
for Hard-to-Employ TANF Recipients: Final Results From a Test
of Transitional Jobs and Preemployment Services in Philadelphia,
OPRE Report 2011-19 (submitted by MDRC to the
Department of Health and Human Services, December 2011),
https://tinyurl.com/bxyypzte.
14. Danielle Cummings and Dan Bloom, Can Subsidized
Employment Programs Help Disadvantaged Job Seekers? A Synthesis
of Findings From Evaluations of 13 Programs, OPRE Report
2020-23 (submitted by MDRC to the Department of Health and
Human Services, February 2020), https://tinyurl.com/bdf2bfcf.
Chapter4: Factors That Aect How
Work Requirements and Work Supports
Change People’s Employment and Income
e extent to which work requirements and work
supports boost employment and income probably
depends on many factors. When policymakers consider
proposals that aim to increase employment and income
among participants of means-tested programs through
work requirements or work supports, it is important to
consider three factors—the extent to which participants
are already engaged in work-related activities, barriers to
work, and economic conditions—and how those factors
could change over time.
Employment, training, and job-search assistance are
already widespread among some groups of participants in
means-tested programs, which limits the extent to which
work requirements can raise employment. Many program
participants who are not engaged in work-related activities
report having multiple conditions that make employment
dicult, such as health issues or child care responsibili-
ties.
1
e ability of low-income adults to nd and keep
employment also depends on the health of the economy.
Participation in Work-Related
Activities in the Absence of Work
Requirements and Work Supports
e ability of work requirements and work supports
to boost the employment of recipients is limited by
the extent to which the recipients would participate in
work-related activities in the absence of those provi-
sions. Because of that constraint, expansions of work
requirements and work supports in the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program or Medicaid could be less
eective than that expansion was decades earlier in the
Aid to Families With Dependent Children program. In
1993, about 55percent of AFDC recipients reported not
working, searching for work, training for a job, or being a
student (see Figure 4-1). In contrast, from 2013 through
1. Elderly people and people who receive disability benets through
Supplemental Security Income or Social Security are excluded from
this analysis because they are exempt from work requirements.
2016, about 30percent of SNAP and Medicaid recipients
reported not participating in at least one of those activ-
ities. Because the employment rate among SNAP and
Medicaid recipients is much higher than it was for AFDC
recipients, it has less room to increase further.
When work requirements are added to programs in
which many recipients are already working enough hours
to meet the requirements, they are likely to reduce recip-
ients’ total income. at is because those requirements
are unlikely to increase their earnings but can reduce the
benets they receive. Employed adults must document
their compliance with the work requirements (typically
each month or every few months), a process that can be
arduous and time-consuming. Some employed adults lose
their benets because they do not submit the required
information, either because they nd doing so too oner-
ous or because they are not aware of the requirement.
2
us, when work requirements are imposed on recipients
among whom employment is more common—such as
those in SNAP and Medicaid—the reduction in benets
is more likely to exceed any increase in earnings.
2. Research has shown that many families whose income
appears low enough for them to qualify for SNAP do
not receive benets because they do not adhere to the
requirements for demonstrating that their income is low
enough. However, that research does not examine whether
the work requirement for able-bodied adults without
dependents creates additional reporting requirements that
lead to more eligible adults losing their benets. See Colin
Gray, “Leaving Benets on the Table: Evidence From SNAP,”
Journal of Public Economics, vol. 179 (November 2019),
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2019.104054; and Tatiana
Homono and Jason Somerville, “Program Recertication
Costs: Evidence From SNAP,” American Economic Journal:
Economic Policy, vol. 13, no. 4 (November 2021), pp. 271–298,
https://doi.org/10.1257/pol.20190272. When Arkansas
instituted a work requirement for Medicaid recipients, it
substantially increased the frequency with which some adult
recipients had to demonstrate continued eligibility, which
probably led to a loss of Medicaid coverage among working
adults.
26 WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
Barriers to Work
Work requirements are less likely to lead to employment
and more likely to reduce income, including benets,
when applied to people who have conditions that make it
dicult to nd and keep a job. Participants in Temporary
Assistance for Needy Families, SNAP, and Medicaid who
are not working or preparing to work often report having
such conditions.
3
Many of them report having a disability
that limits their ability to work, such as physical or men-
tal health issues. Other common barriers to employment
include caring for young children or not having a high
school diploma or equivalent degree.
4
In a 2014survey, about 70percent of recipients in
TANF and SNAP who were not working or preparing to
work reported having at least one barrier to employment,
and about 20percent reported having more than one
(see Figure 4-2). Such barriers were also common among
3. CBO used data from the 2014 Survey of Income and Program
Participation to examine barriers to employment among recipients.
4. Parents were classied as caring for a young child if they had a child
under the age of 6 and were a single parent or had a working spouse.
their counterparts in Medicaid, but less so. Under the
stringent work requirements in TANF, recipients who
report having those barriers are much less likely to be
employed when they leave the program. e employ-
ment rate for former TANF recipients who report having
multiple barriers to employment is about 35percent,
compared with about 70percent for former recipients
who report having none of those employment barriers.
Work supports can have a larger eect on employment
when they are directed at people who face barriers to nd-
ing and keeping jobs instead of all participants. For exam-
ple, subsidized child care can boost employment more
when it is targeted at people who are not working because
they cannot aord adequate care. In contrast, extending
child care subsidies to people with higher income would
probably have a smaller eect on employment because
those people are more likely to be able to aord child
care without a subsidy. Similarly, job training can boost
employment more when it is directed at people who are
unlikely to nd a job because they lack marketable skills.
Of the 11approaches to getting AFDC recipients work-
ing that were evaluated in the 1990s, the largest increase
Figure 4-1 .
Work-Related Activities of Adult Recipients of Assistance, by Program
Percent
0
20
40
60
80
100
AFDC TANF SNAP Medicaid
Not Working or
Preparing to Work
a
Being in School
Being in a Job-
Training Program
Searching for Work
Working
AFDC,
1993
2013–2016
TANF SNAP Medicaid
The ability of work
requirements to boost
employment is limited
by the extent to which
recipients would have
participated in work-
related activities in
the absence of those
provisions. Most SNAP
and Medicaid recipients
are working or preparing
to work even though few
of them are subject to
work requirements.
Data source: Survey of Income and Program Participation. See www.cbo.gov/publication/57702#data.
Data are limited to recipients between the ages of 18 and 61 who were not receiving disability benefits.
Some recipients are engaged in multiple activities. They are included in the lowest applicable segment of the bar and not in higher segments.
AFDC = Aid to Families With Dependent Children; SNAP = Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; TANF = Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
a. Recipients are defined as not working or preparing to work if they report not working, searching for work, being in a job-training program, or being in school.
27CHAPTER 4: FACTORS THAT AFFECT EMPLOYMENT AND INCOME WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS
in employment came from assigning the most disadvan-
taged participants to training before they began searching
for a job.
5
However, even in that program many people
remained unemployed, which is indicative of the limits of
both work requirements and work supports.
A 2015survey of SNAP recipients provides detailed
data on the barriers to employment faced by recipients
of means-tested benets.
6
As in the 2014survey, physi-
cal and mental health issues are pervasive among those
recipients. ey constitute the most common barrier to
employment, even though recipients of Supplemental
Security Income and Social Security were excluded
from the survey (see Figure 4-3). e 2015survey also
5. Gayle Hamilton and others, National Evaluation of Welfare-
to-Work Strategies (submitted by Manpower Demonstration
Research Corporation to the Department of Health and Human
Services, December 2001), https://tinyurl.com/2p89s5ad.
6. Gretchen Rowe, Elizabeth Brown, and Brian Estes, SNAP
Employment and Training (E&T) Characteristics Study:
Final Report (submitted by Mathematica Policy Research
to the Department of Agriculture, October 2017),
https://go.usa.gov/xtgYQ.
excluded recipients who were caring for an incapacitated
adult or a child under age 6or who were participating in
a drug or alcohol treatment program; still, 11percent of
respondents reported a lack of child care as a barrier to
employment, indicating that not having access to before-
and after-school care can limit employment. Other
reported barriers, such as a lack of education or trans-
portation, could be addressed by workforce development
programs. Overall, about 79percent of the surveyed
SNAP recipients reported facing at least one barrier to
employment, and 48percent reported more than one.
Economic Conditions
When economic conditions are poor, work requirements
can have adverse eects on participants in means-tested
programs. In particular, those requirements can sub-
stantially reduce program participation while boosting
employment only a little, and they can reduce average
income because the lost benets are not oset by addi-
tional earnings. When jobs become harder to nd, work
requirements are dicult to meet through employment.
At those times, if the requirements are not eased, they
put families at greater risk of losing benets before they
Figure 4-2 .
Barriers to Employment Among Adult Recipients of Assistance
Who Are Not Engaged in Work-Related Activities, by Program
Percent
0
20
40
60
80
100
TANF SNAP Medicaid
No Barriers
a
One Barrier
Multiple Barriers
Most recipients of
assistance who are not
working or preparing
to work report facing
at least one of three
common barriers that
hinder employment.
Data source: Survey of Income and Program Participation, 2014. See www.cbo.gov/publication/57702#data.
Data are limited to recipients between the ages of 18 and 61 who were not receiving disability benefits, working, searching for work, or in school.
SNAP = Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; TANF = Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
a. The barriers to employment reflected in the data are having a work-limiting disability, not having a high school diploma or equivalent degree, and having a
child younger than 6 while being a single parent or having a working spouse.
28 WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
can nd work—and they are less likely to spur recipients
to nd work.
In recent years, TANF’s work requirements have
probably reduced the average income of recipients
during periods of high unemployment. To examine
the eects of work requirements during such periods,
the Congressional Budget Oce used data from the
Department of Health and Human Services that cover
2012 through 2018.
7
Like other job seekers, parents in
TANF nd jobs far less frequently when the local unem-
ployment rate is elevated. Yet the rate at which those
parents lose cash payments does not decline substantially
at such times.
8
Instead, states terminate more families’
benets for violations of the work requirements (see
Figure 4-4). ose terminations probably contribute to
fewer families’ being employed when they stop receiving
cash payments, which leads to lower income. Between
7. For details on CBO’s analysis, see Appendix B.
8. Before 1993 (when the work requirement was imposed), AFDC
recipients tended to stay in the program longer when the
unemployment rate was high. See Hilary Hoynes, “Local Labor
Markets and Welfare Spells: Do Demand Conditions Matter?”
Review of Economics and Statistics, vol. 82, no. 3 (August 2000),
pp. 351–368, https://doi.org/10.1162/003465300558812.
2012 and 2018, the average cash income of families in
the month they stopped receiving assistance was $485(in
2019dollars) when the unemployment rate was 6per-
cent or higher, compared with $697during periods of
lower unemployment.
During economic downturns, policymakers are some-
times able to waive or reduce work requirements to
lessen the negative eects on recipients’ employment and
income. Federal law allows states to waive SNAP’s work
requirement for able-bodied adults without dependents,
for example, in areas where the unemployment rate
exceeds 10percent or is more than 20percent above the
national average. In addition, policymakers temporarily
reduced the work requirements in TANF and SNAP
during the 2020recession.
9
But TANF has xed fund-
ing that constrains states’ ability to provide benets to
9. HHS notied state administrators that it would “grant reasonable
cause exceptions… to the maximum extent possible” for 2020;
see Department of Health and Human Services, Administration
for Children and Families, “TANF-ACF-PI-2020-01 (Questions
and answers About TANF and the Coronavirus Disease 2019
[COVID-19] Pandemic),” March 2020, https://go.usa.gov/
xtggc. In addition, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act
suspended the work requirement for ABAWDs through the
month after the public health emergency declaration is lifted.
Figure 4-3 .
Barriers to Employment for Selected Recipients of SNAP
Percent
Substance Abuse
Criminal Record
Lack of Certifications
Lack of Child Care
Not Proficient in English
Housing Problems
Caring for an Incapacitated Relative
Lack of Education
Transportation Issues
Physical or Mental Health Issues
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
A 2015 survey of SNAP
recipients indicates that
they face multiple barriers
to employment that are not
measured by the Survey
of Income and Program
Participation.
Data source: Department of Agriculture. See www.cbo.gov/publication/57702#data.
Data are limited to SNAP recipients who had to register for work. Thus, the data probably exclude most adults who are receiving disability benefits, caring for an
incapacitated adult or a dependent child under age 6, or participating in a drug or alcohol treatment program.
SNAP = Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
29CHAPTER 4: FACTORS THAT AFFECT EMPLOYMENT AND INCOME WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS
families for a longer period by relaxing its work require-
ments during economic downturns. Ninety-ve percent
of federal funding for TANF is provided through the
State Family Assistance Grant, which remains at about
$16.5billion regardless of economic conditions. us, it
is more dicult for states to fund extended TANF bene-
ts in response to an increase in economic hardship than
it is for states to expand assistance through SNAP or
Medicaid, both of which generally receive enough federal
funding to provide benets to all eligible people.
When economic conditions deteriorate, some work
supports probably become more eective than others
at boosting employment. Subsidized employment and
job training, for instance, can build skills at times when
participants are unlikely to gain experience through an
unsubsidized job because so few are available. (When
jobs are plentiful, those work supports are probably more
likely to replace unsubsidized employment.) In contrast,
subsidized child care might boost employment less when
jobs are scarce. at is because fewer of the people who
would work more if they received subsidized child care
would be able to nd additional work.
Figure 4-4 .
Employment and Access to Benefits for Families of Single Adults With Children
Who Left TANF, by Local Unemployment Rate
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
0
10
20
30
40
50
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
●
●
●
●
●
●
●
0
150
300
450
600
750
900
3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Percent
Unemployment Rate
Employed Upon
Leaving
9 or More3 or Less
Left Because They
Violated the Work
Requirement
2019 Dollars
Unemployment Rate
9 or More3 or Less
Monthly Cash
Income Upon Leaving
Employment
Income
When the
unemployment rate
is higher, families
are more likely to
stop receiving cash
payments because
they do not meet the
work requirements,
are less likely to be
employed when they
leave, and tend to
have lower income
when they leave.
Data source: Department of Health and Human Services, 2012 through 2018. See www.cbo.gov/publication/57022#data.
The analysis is generally limited to the families of single women with children who are subject to the federal work standard and who live in one of the nine states
for which CBO has adequate data.
Chapter5: Options for Changing
Work Requirements and Work Supports
Changing the stringency of work requirements and fund-
ing for work supports would aect the employment and
income of the families served by Temporary Assistance
for Needy Families, the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program, and Medicaid. By altering pro-
gram participation and average benet amounts, policy
changes could also aect federal spending.
1
e Congressional Budget Oce has examined seven
options that policymakers could pursue to expand or
reduce work requirements or work supports. e options
are assumed to take eect at the beginning of scal year
2023. is report gives CBO’s conclusions about the
options’ broad eects on participation, employment,
income, and spending. In many cases, the magnitude of
the eects is highly uncertain.
Two Options That Would Expand
Work Requirements
CBO examined two of the many ways in which lawmak-
ers could expand work requirements to promote employ-
ment and reduce federal spending (see Table 5-1, top
panel). In general, expanding work requirements would
cause some newly covered recipients to work more, and
most of those recipients would see their earnings rise by
more than their benets fell. But other recipients would
be left without earnings or benets because they did
not comply with the new requirements. e reduction
in benets would lower federal spending if the work
requirements were imposed on recipients of SNAP or
Medicaid because the federal government funds a xed
percentage of those benets.
Require Able-Bodied Medicaid Recipients
Without Dependents to Work
e rst option that CBO examined would require all
states to impose work requirements on their Medicaid
1. In some cases, changes to a program can aect spending on other
programs in addition to spending on the changed program. For
example, policies that increased the cash payments provided
through TANF would reduce the benets provided through
SNAP. Changes in spending on other programs are not included
in the estimates of costs provided in this analysis.
recipients. Under this policy, which would be similar
to the requirements imposed in Arkansas, able-bodied
adults who have no dependents and who are between
the ages of 19 and 49 would lose Medicaid coverage if
they did not participate in work-related activities for at
least 80hours per month for three or more months over
the course of a year. Adults would be exempt from the
requirements if they have dependents, receive bene-
ts from Supplemental Security Income or Disability
Insurance, are pregnant, or have certain mental or physi-
cal health conditions. In addition to employment, hours
spent in school, training for a job, searching for a job, or
performing community service would count toward the
80-hour minimum. About 30million people would be
potentially subject to the work requirements each year,
though many of them would qualify for an exemption.
is option would substantially increase the amount that
people who lost Medicaid coverage would pay out of
pocket for medical services, and it would increase employ-
ment very slightly. By CBO’s estimate, a very small por-
tion of adults who were subject to the new requirements
would work more hours to avoid losing insurance through
Medicaid. Employment would not increase much because
many Medicaid recipients have limited access to work sup-
ports and do not receive intensive case-management ser-
vices. For every recipient who worked more, several recip-
ients would lose Medicaid coverage because they failed to
demonstrate compliance, and many of those adults would
become uninsured. ey would forgo some health care
and pay more out of pocket for the care they did use, leav-
ing them with less money to spend on nonmedical goods
and services, on average. e increase in medical expenses
from the loss of insurance coverage under this option is far
more certain than the change in employment.
is option would decrease federal spending by about
$135billion from 2023 to 2031, CBO estimates. Spending
would fall by about $15billion per year, on average,
because about 2.2million adults would lose Medicaid cov-
erage. at reduction in enrollment represents a substantial
portion of the adults who would be subject to the work
requirements. (Many other adults would be exempt.)
32 WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
Expand SNAP’s Work Requirement While
Providing More Employment and Training Services
Under current law, only able-bodied adults who do
not have dependents and who are under the age of
50(ABAWDs) risk losing SNAP benets if they do not
spend 20hours a week, on average, participating in
work-related activities. is second option that CBO
examined would potentially extend that requirement to
about 10million able-bodied adults between the ages of
18 and 49who have dependents, though many of them
would qualify for an exemption.
2
(Other members of
2. States could still waive the work requirement if their
unemployment rate was high. Certain categories of people
(pregnant women, the parents of children younger than 6, and
people who care for an incapacitated person) would be exempt
from the requirement. States would have some discretion to
exempt individuals otherwise subject to the requirements.
those adults’ households would not be at risk of losing
benets because of the requirement.) Participants would
receive additional employment and training services to
boost their chances of nding a job.
is option would reduce federal spending if the
decrease in spending on SNAP benets exceeded the
increase in the program’s administrative costs, which
include the cost of providing additional employment and
training services. If this option increased that spend-
ing substantially, it could push up spending overall.
Spending on SNAP benets would fall primarily because
of reductions in benets for adults who did not com-
ply with the work requirement. (Spending on benets
would also fall for adults whose earnings rose because
they worked more to meet the requirement.) To help
adults comply with the work requirement, the option
Table 5-1 .
Eects of Particular Options That Would Change Work Requirements
Option
Number
of People
Potentially
Subject to the
Change per
Year
a
Eect on People Subject to the Change
Eect on Federal
Spending,
2023 to 2031
Percent
Employed
Income and
Expenses
Expand Work Requirements
Require Able-Bodied Medicaid
Recipients Without Dependents to
Work
About
30 million
Very small
increase
About 2.2 million adults per year would lose
Medicaid coverage, which would increase
their health care spending, on average
Decrease by
$135 billion
Expand SNAP’s Work Requirement
While Providing More Employment
and Training Services
About
10 million
Modest
increase
Average income would decline; many families
would have very low income, but some
families would have higher earnings
Spending on benets
would decrease, but
administrative costs
would increase
Reduce Work Requirements
Eliminate Hours-Worked Criteria for
ABAWDs’ Continued SNAP Eligibility
About
5 million
Small
decrease
Average income would increase; some adults
would have lower earnings, but the number
of adults with very low income would decline
substantially
Increase
Prohibit States From Imposing TANF’s
Work Requirements on Single Parents
With a Child Younger Than One
About
50,000
Modest
decrease
Average income would change little, but
fewer families would have very low income
Unchanged
Source: Congressional Budget Oce.
The options would be implemented at the beginning of 2023.
The hours-worked criteria limits ABAWDs to 3 months of benefits in any 36-month period if they are not working at least 20 hours per week or in job training.
ABAWD = able-bodied adult without dependents; SNAP = Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; TANF = Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
a. Many of those people would be exempt from the expanded work requirements because they fall into certain categories (for example, caring for an
incapacitated person) or, for SNAP, because they live in an area with high unemployment. For similar reasons, many of the adults potentially subject to the
reduced work requirements are exempt from the work requirement under current law.
33CHAPTER5: OPTIONS FOR CHANGING WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS
would substantially increase federal funding for SNAP’s
employment and training programs and would require
states to oer case-management services to all adults sub-
ject to it. e states would not be required to match any
of the additional federal funding for such programs. In
2019, the federal government provided $124million in
such unmatched funding for employment and training
programs.
In all likelihood, this option would modestly increase
employment among the additional recipients who would
become subject to the expanded work requirement. Its
eect on employment would probably exceed that of
the option that would impose a work requirement on
Medicaid recipients because SNAP recipients would be
oered more work supports. (Some states would prob-
ably not be prepared to oer those supports for several
years.) But the evidence of employment increases from
the work requirement for ABAWDs suggests that this
option would boost employment only a little if recipients
were not provided with intensive case-management ser-
vices, such as assistance provided in person by a trained
caseworker. e eects of this option on employment
and earnings are also highly uncertain because of the
lack of research on SNAP’s employment and training
programs.
Under this option, income would decline, on average,
for households with adults who were not exempt from
the work requirement. Many of those households have
few other resources. In particular, only about 53per-
cent of SNAP households with children had earnings
in 2019. Many of the nonworking households whose
benets would decrease under this option would have
very low income. For example, a single parent with two
children who was not working would have his or her
maximum monthly SNAP benet reduced from about
$658 to around $459in 2022(excluding the emergency
allotments that will expire once the current public health
emergency declaration is lifted); in many cases, that
payment would still be the family’s primary source of
income because few families receive cash payments from
TANF. Other adults would probably work more under
this option, but the size of the increase in their earnings
from the combination of the expanded work require-
ment and work supports is very uncertain. According to
CBO’s assessment, that increase in earnings would be
smaller than the reduction in benets, thus decreasing
families’ income, on average.
Two Options That Would Reduce
Work Requirements
Lawmakers could reduce work requirements in many ways
to boost the income of the poorest families. is analysis
examines two of them (see Table 5-1, bottom panel).
In general, if work requirements were lessened, many
newly exempt recipients would receive benets for a
longer period, and fewer of those recipients would work.
3
During periods of high unemployment, the boost in
income from extended benets would probably be larger
than the reduction in earnings from less work. Generally,
the increase in benets would lead to higher federal
spending for SNAP and Medicaid but not for TANF.
Eliminate Hours-Worked Criteria for
ABAWDs’ Continued SNAP Eligibility
Under this option, able-bodied adults without depen-
dents would no longer be limited to 3months of benets
in any 36-month period if they were not working at least
20hours per week or in job training. Eliminating that
hours-worked criteria would increase spending on SNAP
by boosting the number of people receiving benets.
About 5million fewer people would be potentially sub-
ject to the work requirement each year, though many of
them are exempt from it under current law. is option
would increase federal spending by providing benets to
more people.
Among the people who would no longer be subject to
SNAP’s work requirement, this option would probably
decrease employment slightly—but it would substan-
tially increase income for the many SNAP recipients
who would no longer lose benets because of the work
requirement. A much smaller number of people would
have lower income from working less because they
would no longer be at risk of losing SNAP benets. But
the specic size of the decrease in employment (and
the resulting eect on earnings) is highly uncertain. In
contrast, this option would clearly reduce the number of
nonworking ABAWDs with very low income by provid-
ing them with more assistance to purchase food, and it
would probably increase ABAWDs’ income, on average.
3. In addition to possibly boosting income, on average, these
options would allow nonworking people to continue receiving
benets, thus aording them a steady income stream.
Compelling those people to try to nd and keep employment, by
contrast, could result in their periodically having no income.
34 WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
Prohibit States From Imposing TANF’s
Work Requirements on Single Parents
With a Child Younger Than One
Although states are allowed to exclude from TANF’s
work requirements single parents with a child who has
yet to turn one, about half of states choose to apply those
requirements to some or all of those parents. Under
this option, states would not be allowed to reduce the
benets given to those parents for insucient participa-
tion in work-related activities. at change would reduce
the number of TANF recipients whose families were
potentially subject to the work requirements by about
50,000each year, CBO estimates, though many of those
families would have been exempt under current law.
e resulting increase in the number of TANF recipi-
ents would not change federal funding for the program,
which is set at a xed amount.
To better understand the potential implications of
this option on employment and income, CBO exam-
ined the experience of TANF recipients in Alabama.
In October2017, that state stopped exempting from
TANF’s work requirements the single parents of children
between the ages of 6months and 11months.
4
Even
though this option would make a change in the oppo-
site direction (eliminating instead of imposing the work
requirements on parents with a young child), the eects
are probably comparable in size. CBO used data pro-
vided by the Department of Health and Human Services
for this particular analysis.
is option would decrease employment among the
parents subject to it by slowing the rate at which they
found jobs. Alabama’s application of its work require-
ment to single parents of children between the ages of
6months and 11months substantially increased their
employment.
5
Although raising the age threshold back to
12months in Alabama might lower employment to its
previous level, this option would be unlikely to have an
eect that large on employment nationwide. e unem-
ployment rate in Alabama was about 4percent when it
implemented the change in work requirements, whereas
this option would probably exempt mothers in areas of
4. e only time one of the 14 states in CBO’s data from HHS
increased the exemption to 11 months appears to be in 2014.
at change is dicult to evaluate because during the months
leading up to it, the state rarely enforced the work requirement
on families with young children.
5. For a detailed description of CBO’s results and methods, see
Appendix B.
the country where jobs were scarce as well as in areas
where they were plentiful.
Alabama’s application of its work requirement to sin-
gle parents of children under age one appears to have
increased their average cash income during the year
after they entered TANF. Average cash income increased
because the additional earnings for some families were
larger than the loss of cash payments for families who
did not meet the work requirement. is option, which
would reverse such a policy in a number of states, would
have eects in the opposite direction.
Nevertheless, CBO expects that this option would not
change recipients’ income much, on average. Although
raising the age threshold back to 12months in Alabama
might lower average cash income in that state to its
previous level, the net eect of such a change on earnings
nationwide would probably be much smaller, for two rea-
sons. First, jobs would not be as plentiful in some of the
states that would be forced to raise the threshold, which
would decrease the number of recipients that could nd
work under current law and thus reduce the income loss
under this policy. Second, Alabama provides smaller cash
payments than most other states, so families who, because
of this option, stayed in the program longer in those other
states would see a larger increase in payments.
is option would reduce the number of families with
very low income, in CBO’s estimation. Many of the par-
ents who would not work regardless of the requirement
would be spared from having very low income because
they would remain eligible for cash payments. Other
parents would have lower income because they would
choose to work less in the absence of the work require-
ment, but eligibility for cash payments would spare
many of them from having very low income.
Two Options That Would Expand
Work Supports
To promote employment and increase the income of
poor families, lawmakers could expand work supports
for participants in means-tested programs. In general,
expanding work supports would increase employment
and boost consumption because it would reduce recip-
ients’ spending on child care and job preparation as
well as increase their earnings. (e eect on consump-
tion would be greater than that from expanding work
requirements.) Expanding work supports would push up
federal spending if the funding was not diverted from
35CHAPTER5: OPTIONS FOR CHANGING WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS
other services, however. Although increases in earnings
from expanded work supports might reduce spending
on means-tested benets, those reductions would be
unlikely to oset a large portion of the spending on the
work supports. Among the many ways that lawmak-
ers could expand work supports, CBO examined two
options (see Table 5-2, top panel).
Increase Funding for Subsidized Child Care
to Support More TANF, SNAP, and Medicaid
Recipients
To make subsidized child care available to more par-
ents in TANF, SNAP, and Medicaid, this option would
increase federal funding for the discretionary component
of the Child Care Development Fund by $3billion per
year (which represents 50percent of nonsupplemental
funding).
6
In response to that increase in federal funding
for child care, states could reduce the amount paid by the
many single parents in those three programs who already
receive subsidies. In addition, states could use a portion
6. Increases in funding larger than $3 billion would probably be
less targeted at parents in TANF, SNAP, and Medicaid because
a greater portion of the additional subsidies would go to parents
whose income is too high for them to qualify for those programs.
of the additional federal funding to assist some of the
single parents in those programs who pay for unsubsi-
dized child care despite meeting the federal requirements
for the CCDF. By expanding subsidized child care for
hundreds of thousands of parents each year, this option
would increase federal spending by about $26billion
from 2023 to 2031, CBO estimates.
Under this option, states would provide subsidies to
more program participants and increase the size of the
subsidies, which would reduce participants’ share of
the cost of child care and probably help them obtain
higher-quality care. Beginning in 2018, lawmakers
increased funding for the CCDF by 41percent, and by
2019the states had used that funding to raise spending
about 34percent above its level in 2017. As a result, the
number of subsidy recipients rose by about 7percent,
and the number of children on waitlists for subsidized
child care fell by about 53percent.
States primarily increased their spending in 2019by
boosting child care subsidies. States increased the sub-
sidies by decreasing the amount that parents have to
contribute and by raising the maximum rate a child care
Table 5-2 .
Eects of Particular Options That Would Change Work Supports
Option
Number of
People Subject
to the Change
per Year
Eect on People Subject to the Change
Eect on Federal
Spending,
2023 to 2031
Percent
Employed
Income
and Expenses
Expand Work Supports
Increase Funding for Subsidized Child
Care to Support More TANF, SNAP,
and Medicaid Recipients
Hundreds of
thousands
Small
increase
Earnings would increase slightly,
and child care expenses would fall
substantially
Increase by
$26 billion
Increase Funding for TANF Work
Supports When Unemployment Is
High
Tens of
thousands
Eventual
increase
Income would increase substantially Increase by
$5billion
Reduce Work Supports
Require States to Spend at Least
20 Percent of TANF’s Funding on
Cash Payments
Hundreds of
thousands
Small
decrease
Income would increase substantially
a
Unchanged
a
Source: Congressional Budget Oce.
The options would be implemented at the beginning of 2023.
SNAP = Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; TANF = Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
a. For most programs, reducing work supports would decrease people’s income and reduce federal spending.
36 WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
provider can charge and still be eligible for a subsidy.
7
Raising the maximum rate allowed parents to select
more expensive providers and thus probably obtain
higher-quality care.
is option would increase employment slightly among
the parents who received more benets through the
CCDF. e increase in employment would be concen-
trated among recipients who would not have received
a subsidy under current law, and the 2018expansion
indicates that they would constitute a modest portion of
the recipients aected by the expansion. In addition to
enabling more parents to work immediately, this option
would allow more parents to undertake job training
and job searching by making more subsidies available to
parents who are preparing to work.
Some recipients of TANF, SNAP, and Medicaid would
have substantially more resources to spend on goods and
services other than child care under this option. In addi-
tion to the boost in earnings from more employment,
parents would tend to spend less on child care. e
number of parents paying for unsubsidized care would
fall, and some states would use the additional funding to
reduce copayments tied to subsidized care, which would
benet the parents who were already receiving subsidies.
Increase Funding for TANF’s Work Supports
When Unemployment Is High
Under current law, federal funding for TANF changes
little in response to economic conditions.
8
To develop
the workforce more during periods of weak economic
growth—when jobs are scarce—this option would
increase a state’s TANF funding when its unemploy-
ment rate was high. Specically, funding would rise by
10percent when a state’s unemployment rate was above
6percent, 20percent when it was above 7percent, and
30percent when the rate exceeded 8percent.
e increase in funding would be focused on periods
when unemployment was widespread. For example, if this
option had been in eect during 2009 and 2010, when
the national unemployment rate peaked at 9.9percent,
7. Karen Schulman, Early Progress: State Child Care Assistance
Policies 2019 (National Women’s Law Center, October 2019),
https://tinyurl.com/2p8nj6n6 (PDF, 2.3 MB).
8. Marianne P. Bitler and Hilary W. Hoynes, “e State of
the Social Safety Net in the Post-Welfare Reform Era,”
Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, no. 2 (Fall 2010),
https://tinyurl.com/2p8bpv7v.
it would have increased funding in 47states by a total of
$9billion. In contrast, the option would have increased
funding in only one state in 2018 and 2019, when the
national unemployment rate fell to a low of 3.6percent.
e additional funding would be used to cover 80per-
cent of increases in spending on job training, subsidized
employment, and recurring cash payments that occur
during the period of high unemployment. Other uses of
the funds would be prohibited. Constraints on how the
funding is spent would be similar to those that accompa-
nied the emergency contingency fund used in the wake
of the 2007–2009recession. is option would aect
tens of thousands of program participants each year, and
it would increase federal spending by $5billion from
2023 to 2031, CBO estimates.
9
States would cover the remaining 20percent of addi-
tional spending on job training, subsidized employment,
and recurring cash payments, but they would not have to
increase their own total spending on TANF. Instead, they
could oset their additional spending on those services
by spending less on other TANF services.
10
us, even
if states found it dicult to allocate more of their own
revenues to TANF, they could still receive the additional
funding. Program requirements would stipulate that
the funding be spent promptly on services that increase
participants’ job skills or income.
is option would probably raise employment eventually
by bolstering participants’ job skills. But the initial eect
on employment in each state would depend on which
services it chose to expand. On the one hand, employ-
ment could fall because some recipients of job training
would have worked otherwise and because additional
spending on cash payments would make some people
work less. But those two eects would probably be mod-
est because few recipients would be able to nd work
9. For a description of how CBO forecasted a distribution
of national unemployment rates, see Michael McGrane, A
Markov-Switching Model of the Unemployment Rate, Working
Paper 2022-05 (Congressional Budget Oce, March 2022),
www.cbo.gov/publication/57582. Using historic tendencies in
states’ unemployment rates, CBO estimated a distribution of
those rates around each national unemployment rate. CBO’s
models are designed to forecast the number of states that would
have high and low unemployment rates but not which states those
would be.
10. Some of the increase in employment and income from more
spending on job training and subsidized employment could be
oset by the states’ spending less on other work supports.
37CHAPTER5: OPTIONS FOR CHANGING WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS
during periods of high unemployment. On the other
hand, employment could rise initially because some
recipients of subsidized employment would not have
been hired had the employer had to bear all the cost.
11
Eventually, the skills that recipients developed through
job training and subsidized employment would probably
help them nd slightly more work, on average, across the
various state programs.
12
is option would increase recipients’ income in the
short term and most likely in the long term as well.
Additional spending on subsidized employment and cash
payments would boost their income immediately, and
the skills they learned through subsidized employment
and job training would probably lead to higher future
earnings, on average.
One OptionThat Would Decrease
Work Supports
One way to reduce federal spending would be to
decrease the work supports provided through means-
tested programs. In general, decreasing work supports
would reduce recipients’ employment, lower their
consumption (by causing them to spend more on child
care and job preparation), and decrease their earnings.
If, instead, funding was shifted from work supports to
cash payments for nonworking families, the number
of families in deep poverty could be reduced. Federal
spending would be unchanged in that case, however (see
Table5-2 on page 35, bottom panel). CBO analyzed
that option—even though it is not representative of the
typical eects of decreasing work supports—because it is
the only recent proposal for reducing work supports that
the agency identied.
11. Experience indicates this option might boost employment among
people who are not in TANF. In the wake of the 2007–2009
recession, states appear to have used the emergency contingency
fund to provide subsidized employment to many people who
were not in TANF. See Mary Farrell and others, Subsidizing
Employment Opportunities for Low-Income Families: A Review of
State Employment Programs Created rough the TANF Emergency
Fund (submitted by MDRC to the Department of Health and
Human Services, December 2011), https://tinyurl.com/2p86bdjr.
12. Some job training and subsidized employment programs have
achieved persistent increases in employment and earnings,
but others have not (see Chapter 3 for details). at evidence
indicates that this option would be more likely to increase
employment and earnings if job training is focused on
occupations that have the potential for career advancement.
Require States to Spend at Least 20Percent of
TANF’s Funding on Cash Payments
is option would require states to spend at least 20per-
cent of TANF’s total funding, excluding administrative and
systems costs, on recurring cash payments for recipients—
reversing a modest portion of the downward shift in that
portion of funding that has occurred over the past 25years.
Hundreds of thousands of TANF recipients would be
aected each year by that change, and their income
would increase substantially as a result. is option
would not aect federal spending.
To cover the increased cost of the cash payments, some
states would probably reduce spending on other TANF-
funded services; other states might spend more of their
own funds on TANF as a whole. States would probably
oset most of the increase in spending on cash payments
by reducing spending on work supports and social ser-
vices. In 2019, states that spent less than 20percent of
their TANF funding on recurring cash payments spent
about 40percent on subsidized child care and an addi-
tional 15percent on other work supports. Furthermore,
they allocated about 30percent toward social services for
children, including initiatives aimed at boosting educa-
tional attainment of parents, promoting family preser-
vation and reunication, and providing guidance for
parents on child health and development.
is option would expand the resources of low-income
families by increasing the amount of cash assistance they
received. If this option had been in eect in 2019, the
27states that apportioned less than 20percent of their
TANF funding to cash payments would have had to
increase spending on those payments by $1.1billion,
which constitutes an 18percent increase in the total cash
payments provided by all states—and 10 of them would
have had to more than double their spending on those
payments. States could provide more cash assistance in
two ways: by paying families more or by making pay-
ments to more families (a task they could accomplish by
loosening eligibility standards and conducting outreach
to increase the percentage of eligible families that apply
for benets).
e increase in cash payments would substantially boost
the income of some of the poorest families in the aected
states. In the 27states that spent less than 20percent of
their TANF funding on cash assistance, about 35per-
cent of the families who receive those payments report
being in deep poverty. One reason income is so low in
38 WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
those states is that the states provide little cash assistance
to recipients—families in those states receive $321per
month, on average, compared with $508per month in
other states. In addition to making larger payments to
some recipients, the 27states could provide benets to
more families in poverty. Currently, those states provide
cash assistance to only about 6percent of the families of
single parents who are in poverty.
is option would decrease employment by reducing
work supports and lessening recipients’ incentive to
work. e number of people who would no longer work
would probably be small compared with the number
of people who would receive larger cash payments. e
size of the change in employment is highly uncertain,
though, because it would depend on how states chose to
increase their spending on cash assistance. Increasing the
amount of the payments to nonworking recipients and
boosting the number of nonworking recipients who got
those payments would decrease employment. But some
states might choose to make cash payments available
to working recipients for longer periods, which could
increase employment.
AppendixA: Sources of Income for
Families 24Months After They Start
Receiving Cash Assistance
e Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
program emphasizes reducing recipients’ dependence
on government benets by promoting self-suciency
through employment. Its work requirements, which
were enacted into law in 1996as part of the Personal
Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation
Act (PRWORA), are intended to help families more
quickly replace cash payments with earnings. By law,
states are required to ensure that most recipients are
working within 24months of rst receiving cash assis-
tance. To meet that requirement, states impose work
requirements on most parents before they have been in
the program for 24months.
is appendix describes how the Congressional Budget
Oce used data from the Survey of Income and
Program Participation (SIPP) to evaluate the extent to
which TANF’s work requirements increased the portion
of families that were able to replace cash payments with
earnings in two years.
1
The SIPP Data That CBO Used
e SIPP is a nationally representative survey of U.S.
households that is designed as a series of panels. For each
panel, the Census Bureau continually interviews survey
respondents in the same households—every four months
in most panels—for periods ranging from 32months
to 64months. CBO analyzed the SIPP panels that
began in 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1996, 2001, 2004,
2008, and 2014. e largest panel includes around
50,000households, and the smallest one includes about
15,000households.
In each interview, survey respondents were asked
about their employment, income, and participation in
1. CBO also used the SIPP to evaluate the characteristics of recent
participants in TANF, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance
Program, and Medicaid as well as the types of child care used by
single parents in those programs.
means-tested programs, including Aid to Families With
Dependent Children (AFDC, the program that preceded
TANF and was in place until 1997), TANF, and the
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Because far fewer respondents participate in TANF than
SNAP or AFDC, estimates for that program are less
certain.
Researchers have shown that participation in AFDC/
TANF is sometimes misreported in the SIPP.
2
To
improve the accuracy of its analysis, CBO’s sample
focused on single mothers—the group that consti-
tutes the vast majority of adults who receive benets
from TANF, according to administrative data. Single
fathers and married parents who report being in TANF
are probably more likely to have misreported their
participation.
CBO’s Approach to Analyzing the
SIPP Data
CBO estimated the eects of work requirements on fam-
ilies’ sources of income by comparing changes in those
income sources for single mothers in TANF and for sin-
gle mothers in SNAP in selected years in the 1990s and
2000s. at period encompasses the years during which
welfare reform was most active (the mid-1990s). In
those years, policymakers undertook a series of actions—
including a large expansion of work requirements in
AFDC/TANF—to encourage employment. Several
states expanded work requirements in AFDC starting in
1994; by 1997, many states had implemented TANF’s
broad work requirements. us, CBO compared sources
of income in 1993(the nal year before those changes
occurred) with those in 1997 and in later years for which
data were available.
2. Bruce D. Meyer, Wallace K. C. Mok, and James X. Sullivan,
“Household Surveys in Crisis,” Journal of Economic Perspectives,
vol. 29, no. 4 (Fall 2015), pp. 199–226, http://doi.org/10.1257/
jep.29.4.199.
40 WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
For sources of income, CBO focused on cash payments
and income from employment 24months after single
mothers rst started receiving cash payments from either
AFDC or TANF. CBO relied on self-reported data to
mark the start of assistance. Many single mothers were
already receiving payments from AFDC/TANF or SNAP
in the rst month they responded to the survey; for those
recipients, the date of their rst response was considered
their start of assistance.
CBO aggregated responses about sources of income
24months after assistance began across all participants in
a particular program within a panel. Aggregating fewer
months of data (by taking an average for each year, for
example) would result in imprecise estimates because
few respondents entered TANF in some years. To
determine which date to associate with each data panel,
CBO took the average of the dates at which respondents
entered the program and added 12months to get the
midpoint between the start of assistance and the period
in which the agency evaluated sources of income. at
date determined whether the estimates from that panel
would be included in the period before or after welfare
reform. For the 1992panel, that date was at the end of
January1993; for the 1996panel, it fell in the middle of
May1997. us, the 1992panel was the last one in the
prepolicy period, and the 1996panel was the rst one in
the postpolicy period.
Families’ sources of income could have changed from
1993 to 1997as a result of factors other than work
requirements, such as the expansion of the earned
income tax credit (EITC) or the strengthening economy.
To evaluate whether the changes in sources of income
were caused by the work requirements, CBO compared
those changes for TANF recipients and SNAP recipients.
(SNAP did not impose work requirements on single
mothers, but those women were eligible for the EITC
just like their counterparts in TANF were.)
Specically,
CBO focused on single mothers in SNAP who were not
in TANF. Single mothers enrolled in both programs were
excluded from the SNAP sample because they would
have been subject to TANF’s work requirements. at
approach also enabled CBO to determine whether the
Figure A-1 .
Share of Families Continuing to Receive Assistance After 24 Months,
by Program and Year
Percent
0
20
40
60
80
1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 2007 2010 2013 2016 2019
AFDC/TANF
a
SNAP
But No
AFDC/TANF
Most States
Add Work
Requirements
to AFDC/TANF
Single mothers in TANF,
who were subject to work
requirements starting in the
mid-1990s, tended to stop
receiving benefits much
sooner than they had before.
In contrast, the share of
single mothers in SNAP who
continued to receive benefits
remained about the same.
Data source: Survey of Income and Program Participation. See www.cbo.gov/publication/57702#data.
The analysis is limited to unmarried mothers between the ages of 18 and 61 who are not students and are not receiving disability benefits.
Data are presented only for the years in which the sample size provides sucient precision.
AFDC = Aid to Families With Dependent Children; SNAP = Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; TANF = Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
a. Nearly all TANF recipients also receive benefits from SNAP.
41APPENDIX A: SOURCES OF INCOME FOR FAMILIES WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS
strengthening economy caused the changes in the sources
of income: Single mothers in both TANF and SNAP
would probably have responded to economic conditions
similarly because those participants did not dier much
in their age, educational attainment, and other character-
istics measured in the data.
Families’ Sources of Income
24Months After Receiving
Cash Assistance
e AFDC/TANF work requirements substantially
reduced the number of single mothers who continued
to receive cash payments two years after entering the
program. e prevalence of those longer spells in AFDC/
TANF fell by half from 1993 to 1997 and remained
low in subsequent years (see Figure A-1 on page 40).
Although the prevalence of longer spells fell by 30per-
centage points among AFDC/TANF participants, it fell
by only 8percentage points for SNAP recipients who
were not in TANF. at contrast suggests that the drop
in the prevalence of longer periods of cash assistance was
mostly the result of changes to AFDC/TANF policies,
not the EITC or strengthening economy.
e AFDC/TANF work requirements appear to have
temporarily decreased the number of single mothers
who continued to receive nutrition assistance two years
after entering SNAP. Mothers who entered both AFDC/
TANF and SNAP 24months earlier were 19percentage
points less likely to still be receiving benets through
SNAP in 1997 than they were in 1993, even though
SNAP did not impose work requirements on families
with children (see Figure A-2). One likely reason for the
decline is that the work requirements added to AFDC
increased the earnings of some participants enough that
they no longer qualied for SNAP. But many of the par-
ents who stopped receiving benets from both programs
appeared to still be eligible for SNAP because they were
not employed. In 1993, about 58percent of nonworking
single mothers who left AFDC/TANF also left SNAP
at the same time; that number fell to only 41percent in
Figure A-2 .
Share of Families Continuing to Receive SNAP Benefits After 24 Months,
by Program and Year
Percent
0
15
30
45
60
75
90
1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 2007 2010 2013 2016 2019
SNAP
Only
Both SNAP
and
AFDC/TANF
Most States
Add Work
Requirements
to AFDC/TANF
After the imposition of
work requirements, single
mothers who received
benefits through both SNAP
and TANF tended to stop
receiving SNAP benefits
much sooner than they
had before—even though
continued receipt of SNAP
benefits was not subject to
work requirements.
Data source: Survey of Income and Program Participation. See www.cbo.gov/publication/57702#data.
The analysis is limited to unmarried mothers between the ages of 18 and 61 who are not students and are not receiving disability benefits.
Data are presented only for the years in which the sample size provides sucient precision.
AFDC = Aid to Families With Dependent Children; SNAP = Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; TANF = Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
42 WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
1997.
3
In subsequent years, about 17percent of non-
working single mothers who left TANF also left SNAP
at the same time, and the prevalence of longer spells in
SNAP rose back to its pre-PRWORA level, according to
CBO’s analysis of SIPP data.
TANF’s work requirements led to a higher employment
rate for single mothers two years after they entered the
program. e employment rate for mothers who had
entered TANF two years earlier rose by about 14per-
centage points from 1993 to 1997(see Figure A-3). e
strong economic conditions of the late 1990s do not
appear to have had a large direct eect on employment
3. Another study also found that the transition from AFDC to
TANF led to large reductions in SNAP participation. See Janet
Currie and Jerey Grogger, “Explaining Recent Declines in
Food Stamp Program Participation,” Brookings-Wharton Papers
on Urban Aairs, vol. 2 (2001), pp. 203–244, www.jstor.org/
stable/25058786.
because the employment rate among single mothers in
SNAP who were not subject to TANF’s work require-
ments changed little. In subsequent years, employment
among single parents who had participated in TANF
remained elevated, whereas the employment rate for
their counterparts in SNAP remained relatively low.
e increase in employment for single parents two years
after entering TANF was smaller than the decrease in
their continued receipt of cash assistance, which indicates
a rise in the number of families with neither earnings nor
cash payments. Even though employment rates rose by
14percentage points from 1993 to 1997, the percentage
of single parents still receiving cash payments two years
after entering the program fell by 30percentage points.
ose results are consistent with other evidence indicat-
ing that TANF’s work requirements contributed to the
increase in the number of families with neither earnings
nor cash assistance.
Figure A-3 .
Share of Mothers Employed 24 Months After Family Began Receiving Assistance,
by Program and Year
Percent
0
20
40
60
80
1989 1992 1995 1998 2001 2004 2007 2010 2013 2016 2019
AFDC/TANF
a
Most States
Add Work
Requirements
to AFDC/TANF
SNAP
But No
AFDC/TANF
After work requirements
were added to cash
assistance programs, the
single mothers in those
programs tended to find
employment more quickly.
That was not the case for
single mothers in SNAP,
who were not subject to
work requirements.
Data source: Survey of Income and Program Participation. See www.cbo.gov/publication/57702#data.
The analysis is limited to unmarried mothers between the ages of 18 and 61 who are not students and are not receiving disability benefits.
Data are presented only for the years in which the sample size provides sucient precision.
AFDC = Aid to Families With Dependent Children; SNAP = Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program; TANF = Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
a. Nearly all TANF recipients also receive benefits from SNAP.
AppendixB: The Eects of Work
Requirements on People’s Employment
and Income in Recent Years
Within the past few years, states have imposed work
requirements more widely, including during periods
of high unemployment and on participants in the
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
program who have children under the age of one. To
continue receiving benets, program participants must
work or participate in work-related activities.
e Congressional Budget Oce used administra-
tive data from the Department of Health and Human
Services (HHS) to estimate the eects of work require-
ments in TANF on recipients’ employment and income
in recent years and during periods of high unemploy-
ment.
1
e analysis presented here supplements the lim-
ited evidence on how work requirements have aected
employment and income since 2000.
The HHS Data That CBO Used
e administrative data that HHS collects give a detailed
description of the economic situations for many families
in TANF and track changes in those situations. State
agencies that administer the TANF programs report the
data to HHS to demonstrate compliance with federal
requirements, including the work standard and the ve-
year limit on cash payments.
is analysis is based on data from 2012 to 2018 for
TANF recipients in 14states.
2
e states that CBO
included in the sample provided records for all their
TANF recipients (which no states did before 2012),
and family identiers enabled CBO to observe how the
1. e analysis focuses on the families receiving TANF that are
headed by single parents who could be counted by the states
toward the work standard. Families headed by single parents are
excluded from that standard if the parents are disabled or are
caring for a disabled family member.
2. e 14 states are Alabama, Alaska, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho,
Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Oklahoma,
Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming.
circumstances of those families changed over time while
they were in TANF. CBO used the ne details in the
data, such as recipients’ dates of birth, to conrm that
family identiers were used consistently in the 14states.
CBO could not use data for the other 36states because
they were subject to at least one of three limitations.
•
First, only 28states and the District of Columbia
provided data for all their recipients. e other
22states provided data for a small portion of
recipients. Because those samples are redrawn
each month, CBO cannot track changes in the
circumstances of those recipients and the length of
their spells—or months of consecutive assistance—in
TANF.
•
Second, of the 28states that provided data for
all their recipients, several frequently transferred
recipients to other cash assistance programs for which
CBO does not have data.
•
ird, CBO could not conrm that the family
identiers were unique and used consistently for
several states; use of data from those states might have
obscured changes in the circumstances of recipients in
those states.
e main data le from HHS includes monthly records
of families’ participation in work-related activities,
earnings, other sources of income, and demographic
traits. e sources of cash income included are earn-
ings, child support, and benets from TANF, Social
Security, Supplemental Security Income, unemployment
insurance, and workers’ compensation. Also included
are benets received from the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program (SNAP) and subsidies for child care.
HHS also provided data les that record the circum-
stances of TANF recipients when they leave the program,
44 WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
including their reason for leaving and their income in
the month they stop receiving cash payments. ose data
allowed CBO to conrm that the TANF spell ended
in the month following the last month that the family
appeared in the main le.
Eects of Work Requirements When
the Unemployment Rate Is High
During periods of adverse economic conditions, work
requirements can have negative eects on program
participants. ose requirements can substantially lessen
program participation while boosting employment only a
little and reducing recipients’ average income. When work
becomes harder to nd, it can be dicult for recipients
to meet those requirements through employment. If the
work requirements are not eased at those times, more fam-
ilies are at risk of losing benets before they can nd work.
To examine how the eects of work requirements on
employment vary with economic conditions, CBO
looked at recipients’ employment, income, and program
participation over a certain period. Specically, CBO
estimated how those factors varied with the unem-
ployment rate across 708counties in 9selected states
between 2012 and 2018.
3
To explore whether that varia-
tion was the result of TANF’s work requirements, CBO
examined whether families were more likely when the
unemployment rate was high to have their TANF spells
end because they violated the work requirements.
4
CBO found that TANF’s work requirements probably
boosted recipients’ employment less when the unemploy-
ment rate for their county was high. In particular, only
4.8percent of job seekers in TANF found employment
each month when their county’s unemployment rate was
6percent or higher, compared with 8.6percent when the
rate was below 6percent. at reduction in employment
occurred even though states continued to impose work
3. Five of the 14 states that generally provided consistent measures
of spell length have inconsistencies in the data on employment.
us, this analysis is based on data from Alabama, Alaska,
Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and
Oregon.
4. e data probably understate the number of families that stop
receiving benets because of the work requirement. Some families
probably have their spell end because of the work requirement
without the states knowing whether they are in violation of
it. For example, families may not submit the documentation
necessary to determine continued eligibility because they know
that they do not meet the work requirement.
requirements on most adult TANF recipients. About
36percent of those recipients were exempted from the
work requirements when the unemployment rate was
6percent or higher. (When the rate was below 6percent,
about 31percent of recipients were exempted.)
In addition, CBO found that TANF’s work requirements
probably reduced the average income of recipients during
periods of high unemployment by halting cash payments
to more families with little or no earnings. e percentage
of spells ending because of work-requirement violations
rose from 6percent when the unemployment rate was
below 6percent to 18percent when the unemployment
rate was 6percent or higher. ose violations reduced
the extent to which additional cash payments oset the
reduction in earnings from less employment. Families
only received cash assistance for about one month longer,
on average, when the unemployment rate was 6per-
cent or higher than when the unemployment rate was
below 6percent, even though job seekers in TANF took
ninemore months to nd a job, on average, when the
unemployment rate was higher, CBO estimates.
During periods of high unemployment, TANF’s work
requirements caused a large portion of the families leaving
the program to have very low income. When the unem-
ployment rate was 6percent or higher, 18percent of fam-
ilies leaving TANF were expelled for violating the work
requirements, CBO found, and their average cash income
was $153in the month after they lost benets, which is
less than 10percent of the poverty threshold for a family
of three. If SNAP benets are included, average monthly
income for those families rose to $569. In contrast, when
the unemployment rate was lower than 6percent, the
share of families leaving TANF that were expelled for
violating the work requirement was 5percent.
Eects of Work Requirements on
Families With Young Children
Although states are allowed to exclude from the work
standard single parents with a child under the age of one,
about half of states choose to apply work requirements
to some or all of those parents. CBO examined how
expanding work requirements to those parents aected
their employment and income by comparing trends in
outcomes for families who were subject to the expansion
with families who were not. CBO found that expanding
work requirements to parents who entered TANF with a
child younger than one increased their employment but
had little eect on their income, on average.
45APPENDIX B: THE EFFECTS OF WORK REQUIREMENTS ON PEOPLE’S EMPLOYMENT AND INCOME WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS
How CBO Analyzed the Eects of Work
Requirements on Families With Young Children
To estimate the eects of work requirements on the
employment and income of families with children younger
than one year of age, CBO examined the recent experi-
ences of TANF recipients in Alabama. In 2017, Alabama
was one of 25states that provided work-requirement
exemptions to single parents whose youngest child was
less than one year old. At the beginning of 2018, though,
Alabama stopped providing exemptions to nearly all single
parents who had a child between the ages of 6months
and 11months. CBO used two approaches to examine
the eects of that policy change on the employment and
income of TANF recipients.
First, CBO examined the eects on families while they
were in TANF and in the month after they left the pro-
gram. To do that, the agency compared the employment
and income of single parents who had a child between
the ages of 6months and 11months in 2018with the
employment and income of single parents who had a
child in that age range in 2017. e agency compared
those changes in employment and income with changes
in those outcomes among single parents whose youngest
child was older to adjust for dierences that were driven
by other factors (such as economic conditions) instead of
the expansion of the work requirement. at approach
illustrates the eects of the expansion, but it does not
fully capture the reduction in income from lost benets
because families remained in the sample for only one
month after they stopped receiving cash payments. CBO
thus used a second, more comprehensive, approach,
which examined employment and income in the months
after families left TANF as well as while they were in it.
Using that second approach, CBO estimated the eects
of Alabama’s work-requirement expansion over the year
following families’ entry into TANF in 2018. Whether a
family was subject to the expansion of the work require-
ment was determined by the age of its youngest child
when it entered TANF. Nearly all single parents with a
child between the ages of 6months and 11months in
2018 were subject to the expansion, as were single par-
ents with a child between the ages of zero and 5months
if they remained in the program after that child reached
6months of age.
CBO compared the employment and income in 2017
and 2018 of families whose youngest child was not older
than 11months when the family entered TANF. For
families that were in TANF for less than a year, employ-
ment and income for the remainder of the year were set
equal to their value in the month after those families left
the program.
5
As with the rst approach, CBO compared
the changes in employment and income among the
parents of young children with those changes among the
parents of older children in TANF. By examining changes
in employment and income among single parents of older
children, CBO intended to capture the eects of changes
in economic conditions or policy changes other than the
expansion of the work requirement.
6
What CBO’s Analysis Found
Using the rst approach, CBO determined that
Alabama’s expansion of TANF’s work requirements in
2018increased the employment rate of single parents
whose youngest child was between the ages of 6months
and 11months by 11percentage points during the
months they were in the program (see Figure B-1).
Employment rose because families started searching for
work sooner and found jobs faster when subject to the
work requirement.
Employment also rose among parents of children
between the ages of 12months and 16months. at
change appears to be the result of the expansion’s having
subjected some of those parents to work requirements
for more months, because the employment rates diered
only among parents who entered TANF before their
youngest child turned 12months old.
e rise in employment was probably the result of the
work requirement and not other possibilities, such as
changes in the sample studied, the presence of other
policies (subsidized child care, for instance), or economic
conditions. Specically:
•
e employment rate at program exit stayed roughly
the same from 2017 to 2018. at shows that the
employment increase was not driven by nonworking
5. e analysis is unlikely to be sensitive to that imputation because
a family’s employment and earnings when it left the program
tended to be similar in 2017 and 2018. us, allowing for
reversion to the average employment rate or for earnings to grow
with job experience would not substantially change the estimates
of the eects on employment or earnings.
6. at approach appears to capture dierences in economic
conditions because directly adding measures of economic
conditions, such as the local unemployment rate, did not
substantially change the estimated eects.
46 WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
parents’ being expelled from the program for violating
the work requirement.
•
e percentage of parents with a child between
the ages of 6months and 11months who received
subsidized child care increased by 10percentage
points, but that rise was the result of more
employment, not the cause of it. In both 2017 and
2018, parents generally only received subsidized child
care if they were working or searching for a job. e
expansion of the work requirement does not appear
to have changed their access to subsidies: Alabama
gave subsidies to about 45percent of parents who
Figure B-1 .
Employment for Single Parents in Alabama’s TANF Program, by Age of Youngest Child in
Months and Whether the Family Could be Exempt From the Work Requirement
Percent
0
20
40
60
0
20
40
60
While in TANF
In Month After Leaving TANF
0 3 6 9 12 15 18 21
0 3 6 9 12 15 18 21
2017 Cohort
2018 Cohort
Raw Values
Fitted Values
Age of Youngest Child (Months)
Exemptions Prohibited
in 2018 but Allowed
in 2017
Exemptions
Prohibited
in All Years
When Alabama began
imposing work requirements
on parents whose youngest
child was between the ages
of 6 months and 11 months,
the employment rate of
parents in that group rose by
about 11 percentage points.
Employment also rose among
parents of children between
the ages of 12 months and 16
months, apparently because
some of those parents
were subjected to the work
requirements for more months.
The employment rate at
program exit stayed roughly
the same from 2017 to
2018. That shows that the
employment increase was not
driven by nonworking parents’
being expelled from the
program for violating the work
requirement.
Data source: Department of Health and Human Services. See www.cbo.gov/publication/57702#data.
The analysis is limited to the single-parent families that Alabama could include in the work standard.
TANF = Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
Fitted values give the trends in employment rates by the age of the youngest child.
Parents whose youngest child was 4 months or 5 months old are excluded from this analysis because they were occasionally subject to the work requirement in
2018. Parents whose youngest child was between 12 months and 16 months of age were likely to have been subjected to the work requirement for more months
because of its expansion. Aected data are shown as stand-alone dots in this figure.
47APPENDIX B: THE EFFECTS OF WORK REQUIREMENTS ON PEOPLE’S EMPLOYMENT AND INCOME WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS
were in the labor force and had a child between
the ages of 6months and 11months both before
and after the expansion. at indicates that the
employment increase was not driven by an increase in
subsidized child care.
•
If the employment increase had been driven by
changes in other policies or economic conditions,
then employment would probably also have increased
among single parents who were not subject to the
expansion because their children were slightly older
when they entered TANF. at did not happen,
which shows that the employment increase was
probably not driven by changes in other policies or
economic conditions.
e expansion of the work requirement had countervail-
ing eects on the average cash income of families with
children between the ages of 6months and 11months.
On the one hand, average cash income for families with
young children rose while they were in the program
because of additional earnings from more employment
(see Figure B-2). On the other hand, earnings at program
exit appear to have fallen slightly, and the expansion
reduced the amount of cash assistance families received.
TANF benets decreased primarily because violations of
the work requirement reduced the number of months
that families remained in the program (see Figure B-3).
7
e increases in employment among participants do not
appear to stem from a reduction in the number of people
(or a decrease in the number of less-skilled people) enter-
ing the program. If entry into the program had declined
substantially, as it did after enactment of the Personal
Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation
Act, then unmeasured changes in employment and
income among families who were deterred from entry
might oset the increases experienced by participants.
But the parents of children between the ages of 6months
and 11months continued to account for about 21per-
cent of entrants in 2018(see Figure B-4 on page 50).
Even if entry did not decline for that group overall,
a reduction in entry among less-skilled parents could
have inated the employment rate and average income.
However, the expansion of the work requirement does
not appear to have substantially decreased the frequency
7. Most families who were expelled because of the work requirement
were not employed at that time. at decrease in employment at
exit was oset by higher employment among families that left the
program for other reasons.
with which parents who have little education entered the
program.
Using the second approach, CBO found that TANF’s
work requirements increased employment over the year
after families with young children entered the program.
For single parents of children who were under one year
of age upon entry into TANF, CBO estimates that the
expansion of Alabama’s work requirement increased
their employment rate by 6percentage points while they
remained in TANF. Over the year after they entered the
program, some of that initial increase in employment
was oset by rates of employment that were similar
for families after they left TANF; averaging those rates
brings the estimated eect on the employment rate down
to an increase of about 4percentage points.
Also using the second approach, CBO found that
TANF’s work requirements might have increased the
average cash income of families with young children over
the year after they entered the program. But higher aver-
age earnings while in the program were partly oset by a
reduction in cash payments because some people were in
the program for a shorter time.
A Comparison of CBO’s Findings
Under the Two Approaches
e estimated eects on employment tend to be smaller
under the second approach than under the rst because
the second approach concentrates less on the months in
which families were subject to the expansion of the work
requirement.
e rst approach focuses on the period when families
were directly subject to the expansion because they had a
child between the ages of 6months and 11months. e
second approach expands the examination to all months
of assistance for any families that could be subject to the
expansion for at least one month during their spell in
the program. As a result, the number of months exam-
ined using the second approach was 137percent higher
than the number under the rst approach. Although
the increase in the employment rate was smaller for that
broader group, the increase in the months of employ-
ment was larger—primarily because the employment rate
rose among parents who had a child between the ages of
12months and 16months and who had been subject to
the work requirement earlier as a result of the expansion.
48 WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
A Comparison of CBO’s Findings With Results
of the AFDC Waiver Experiments
In the 1990s, a series of evaluations were conducted on
waiver programs in Aid to Families With Dependent
Children (AFDC). e results from those AFDC waiver
experiments have remained a primary source of evidence
on the eects of work requirements.
8
CBO’s estimates of
the eect of Alabama’s work-requirement expansion on
8. Gayle Hamilton and others, National Evaluation of Welfare-
to-Work Strategies (submitted by Manpower Demonstration
Research Corporation to the Department of Health and Human
Services, December 2001), https://tinyurl.com/2p89s5ad.
Figure B-2 .
Cash Income for Single-Parent Families in Alabama’s TANF Program, by Age of Youngest
Child in Months and Whether the Family Could be Exempt From the Work Requirement
2019 Dollars
0
200
400
600
800
1,000
0
200
400
600
800
1,000
While in TANF
In Month After Leaving TANF
0 3 6 9 12 15 18 21
0 3 6 9 12 15 18 21
2017 Cohort
2018 Cohort
Raw Values
Fitted Values
Age of Youngest Child (Months)
Exemptions Prohibited
in 2018 but Allowed
in 2017
Exemptions
Prohibited
in All Years
When Alabama began
imposing work requirements
on parents whose youngest
child was between the ages
of 6 months and 11 months,
the average cash income
of those families rose
substantially while they were
in the program because of
additional earnings from
more employment.
Average cash income at
program exit appears to
have fallen slightly from 2017
to 2018 for families whose
youngest child was between
the ages of 6 months and 11
months.
Data source: Department of Health and Human Services. See www.cbo.gov/publication/57702#data.
The analysis is limited to the single-parent families that Alabama could include in the work standard.
TANF = Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
Fitted values give the trends in cash income by the age of the youngest child.
Parents whose youngest child was 4 months or 5 months old are excluded from this analysis because they were occasionally subject to the work requirement in
2018. Parents whose youngest child was between 12 months and 16 months of age were likely to have been subjected to the work requirement for more months
because of its expansion. Aected data are shown as stand-alone dots in this figure.
49APPENDIX B: THE EFFECTS OF WORK REQUIREMENTS ON PEOPLE’S EMPLOYMENT AND INCOME WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS
employment and income are similar to the results from
the experimental evaluations once adjustments are made
for dierences in the way the requirements were expanded.
e experimental evaluations generally measured the
eect of fully implemented work requirements by com-
paring income and employment for a group in which
almost everyone was subject to the requirement and a
group in which no one was. In contrast, the single par-
ents who entered Alabama’s TANF program with a child
under the age of 6months in 2018 were rarely subject
to the requirement until their child reached 6months of
age. In addition, the single parents who entered the pro-
gram with a child under the age of 12months in 2017
Figure B-3 .
Cash Assistance for Single-Parent Families in Alabama’s TANF Program, by Age of Youngest
Child in Months and Whether the Family Could be Exempt From the Work Requirement
Percent
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
0
5
10
15
20
25
Ended Because of the Work Requirement
Ended in an Average Month
0 3 6 9 12 15 18 21
0 3 6 9 12 15 18 21
2017 Cohort
2018 Cohort
Raw Values
Fitted Values
Age of Youngest Child (Months)
Exemptions Prohibited
in 2018 but Allowed
in 2017
Exemptions
Prohibited
in All Years
When Alabama began
imposing work requirements
on parents whose youngest
child was between the
ages of 6 months and 11
months, violations of the
work requirement became
a far more common reason
for those families to stop
receiving cash assistance.
The percentage of families
that stopped receiving cash
assistance in an average
month also increased, which
oset some of the increase
in average cash income from
more employment.
Data source: Department of Health and Human Services. See www.cbo.gov/publication/57702#data.
The analysis is limited to the single-parent families that Alabama could include in the work standard.
TANF = Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
Fitted values give the trends in the termination of cash assistance by the age of the youngest child.
Parents whose youngest child was 4 months or 5 months old are excluded from this analysis because they were occasionally subject to the work requirement in
2018. Parents whose youngest child was between 12 months and 16 months of age were likely to have been subjected to the work requirement for more months
because of its expansion. Aected data are shown as stand-alone dots in this figure.
50 WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS JUNE 2022
were typically subject to the requirement once their child
reached 12months of age. Among single parents who
entered the program with a child under 12months of age,
the portion of months within a year that they were subject
to the work requirement increased by 0.41(or 5months).
at increase would have been more than twice as large
(almost 12months) if almost everyone was subject to the
requirement in 2018 and no one was in 2017.
e estimate of the eect on employment from
Alabama’s work-requirement expansion is consistent with
the estimate from the AFDC waiver experiments. CBO
estimates that the employment rate increased by about
4percentage points over the rst year after single parents
entered TANF in Alabama. us, full implementation
of a work requirement in 2018 would have boosted
employment by about 9percentage points if the increase
Figure B-4 .
Entry Into Alabama’s TANF Program Among Single-Parent Families, by Age of Youngest
Child in Months and Whether the Family Could be Exempt From the Work Requirement
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
Percent
Families Entering TANF
Years
Parent’s Education at Entry, on Average
0 3 6 9 12 15 18 21
0 3 6 9 12 15 18 21
Age of Youngest Child (Months)
Exemptions Prohibited
in 2018 but Allowed
in 2017
Exemptions
Prohibited
in All Years
2017 Cohort
2018 Cohort
Work requirements
can boost employment
among TANF recipients by
encouraging work or by
deterring participation by
people who are unlikely
to find employment. The
expansion of the work
requirement in Alabama
does not appear to have
reduced the number of
families entering TANF
or their average level of
education.
Data source: Department of Health and Human Services. See www.cbo.gov/publication/57702#data.
The analysis is limited to the single-parent families that Alabama could include in the work standard.
TANF = Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
Parents whose youngest child was 4 months or 5 months old are excluded from this analysis because they were occasionally subject to the work requirement in
2018. Parents whose youngest child was between 12 months and 16 months of age were likely to have been subjected to the work requirement for more months
because of its expansion. Aected data are shown as stand-alone dots in this figure.
51APPENDIX B: THE EFFECTS OF WORK REQUIREMENTS ON PEOPLE’S EMPLOYMENT AND INCOME WORK REQUIREMENTS AND WORK SUPPORTS FOR RECIPIENTS OF MEANSTESTED BENEFITS
in employment had been proportional to the change
in the percentage of single parents subject to the work
requirement. e average of estimates from the AFDC
waiver experiments that focused on labor force attach-
ment was about 10percentage points.
CBO found more evidence of an increase in families’
average cash income from Alabama’s work-requirement
expansion than the evaluations of the AFDC waiver
experiments found. Most of the dierence in those
estimates can be explained by the larger gains in earn-
ings for participants in Alabama’s work-requirement
expansion, and some can be explained by the smaller
reduction in cash payments for those same participants.
e reduction in cash assistance was smaller because
Alabama provides smaller monthly cash payments than
the programs in the AFDC waiver experiments provided.
In contrast, the reduction in the number of months that
cash assistance was received was larger in CBO’s analysis
than in the AFDC waiver experiments.
List of Tables and Figures
Tables
S-1. Typical Eects of Changing Work Requirements and Work Supports, by Broad Category of Options 3
1-1. Characteristics of Selected Means-Tested Programs, 2019 6
5-1. Eects of Particular Options That Would Change Work Requirements 32
5-2. Eects of Particular Options That Would Change Work Supports 35
Figures
1-1. Spending for TANF and the Programs That Preceded It, by Type of Assistance 7
1-2. Federal Spending for Selected Means-Tested and Work Support Programs 8
1-3. Participation in Selected Means-Tested and Work Support Programs 10
2-1. Employment Rates for Single Women With No Education Beyond High School, by Presence of Children 12
2-2. Average Cash Income for Single Women With No Education Beyond High School, by Presence of Children 14
2-3. Sources of Income for Families of Single Women With Children 24 Months After They
Started Receiving Cash Assistance, by Year 15
2-4. Sources of Cash Income for Families of Single Women With Children andWith No
Education Beyond High School 16
4-1. Work-Related Activities of Adult Recipients of Assistance, by Program 26
4-2. Barriers to Employment Among Adult Recipients of Assistance Who Are Not Engaged
in Work-Related Activities, by Program 27
4-3. Barriers to Employment for Selected Recipients of SNAP 28
4-4. Employment and Access to Benefits for Families of Single Adults With Children Who
Left TANF, by Local Unemployment Rate 29
A-1. Share of Families Continuing to Receive Assistance After 24 Months, by Program and Year 40
A-2. Share of Families Continuing to Receive SNAP Benefits After 24 Months, by Program and Year 41
A-3. Share of Mothers Employed 24 Months After Family Began Receiving Assistance, by Program and Year 42
B-1. Employment for Single Parents in Alabama’s TANF Program, by Age of Youngest Child
in Months and Whether the Family Could be Exempt From the Work Requirement 46
B-2. Cash Income for Single-Parent Families in Alabama’s TANF Program, by Age of
Youngest Child in Months and Whether the Family Could be Exempt From the Work Requirement 48
B-3. Cash Assistance for Single-Parent Families in Alabama’s TANF Program, by Age of
Youngest Child in Months and Whether the Family Could be Exempt From the Work Requirement 49
B-4. Entry Into Alabama’s TANF Program Among Single-Parent Families, by Age of
Youngest Child in Months and Whether the Family Could be Exempt From the Work Requirement 50
About This Document
is report was prepared at the request of the Chairman of the House Committee on the Budget. In
keeping with the Congressional Budget Oce’s mandate to provide objective, impartial analysis, the
report makes no recommendations.
Justin Falk prepared the report with assistance from Julia Heinzel (formerly of CBO) and
guidance from JosephKile, Xiaotong Niu, and Julie Topoleski. William Carrington (formerly of
CBO), MollyDahl, Elizabeth Cove Delisle, KathleenFitzGerald, Jennifer Gray, Rebecca Heller,
Nadia Karamcheva, Justin Latus, SusanneMehlman, Alexandra Minicozzi, Shannon Mok,
Robert Stewart, and Sree Yeluri oered comments on the draft. Elizabeth Ash fact-checked the report.
Marianne Bitler of the University of California‒Davis and Bruce Meyer of the University of Chicago
commented on an earlier draft. e assistance of external reviewers implies no responsibility for the
nal product; that responsibility rests solely with CBO.
Jerey Kling and Robert Sunshine reviewed the report. Christine Bogusz edited it, and Jorge Salazar
created the graphics and designed the cover. R. L. Rebach and Jorge Salazar prepared the report for
publication. e report is available at www.cbo.gov/publication/57702.
CBO seeks feedback to make its work as useful as possible. Please send any comments to
Phillip L. Swagel
Director
June 2022
