Essay On Pre-Welfare Reform

In the early 1900s, the Federal government provided grants from the 1935 Social Security Act to state and local government to assist them and families with dependent children. The Aid to Dependent Children program also known as the mothers’ pension, mothers’ aid and mothers’ assistance program which provided economic aid to families who were poverty-stricken due to lack of a father 's support. The program was focused toward families headed by single women to be able to afford the basic family needs and to stay at home to care for their children in lieu of placing them in an institution. The purpose of the legislation act was to prevent the interruption of family life due to poverty; to enable the mother to stay at home; devote herself to taking care of the house and the care of her children. Due to changes within the Social Security Act changes the name of Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) to Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). The welfare reform debates focusing on replacing the AFDC with new programs and policies for needy families have been argued since the 1990s and several studies indicate …show more content…
Studies on pre-welfare reform provide mixed evidence whether it benefits recipients to leave welfare to work ((Loeb and Corcoran, 2001). According to Grogger (2003) benefits reductions or termination might be the incentive for the recipient to find employment and leave the welfare program more quickly and severe sanctions might increase the possibly of obtaining employment. Research in the early 1990s found that experimental assessments of welfare-to-work transitions did not gain a large increase in economic resources for the single mothers; however requiring work participation or job preparation activities could remove the mothers from the welfare program and into the work force (Turner, Danziger and Seefeldt,