The Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act - Research Paper Example

 Impact of the Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act Introduction The main element of the reforms endorsed through the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) is the implementation of policies relative to welfare to works provisions that shifted millions of people into new jobs after making them undergo work force training programs. The Act aimed at restructuring the welfare systems in order to avoid recipients from becoming dependent on government assistance. The long standing assistance available to people was changed into a mix of short term assistance and on the job training opportunities. Achieving life stability by way of marriage and employment were supported by the government through alternative measures. As per the PRWORA, it was provided that states will no more provide open ended schemes for the use of Aid for Families and Dependent Children (AFDC) and instead, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) was distributed by way of bulk funding from the federal government. As per provisions of TANF, its applicability was limited to two years and recipients were provided with child care and appropriate training. Some government assistance was provided by way of daycare for the first year and states were permitted under the provisions to use a part of the funding to provide for low entry level wages. Recipients were not eligible to get assistance for more than sixty months and they had to assist with enforcement of child support in cases where fathers were not present. Any individual convicted of a drug offense was not eligible for the program and immigrants were debarred to receive TANF till the time they became American citizens (NASW, 1996). Main Body People without homes claimed that the PRWORA deprived them of welfare. They assert that they were not prepared for the change that led to additional homelessness amongst families. Moreover, Republicans have complained that the proposals have not led to many benefits and have proved to be very costly, while feminists have expressed resentment because of the focus on marriage as women will be forced to enter matrimony even if they do not wish to. Consequently, the outcomes of the PRWORA have been disputed and political campaigners have claimed either total success or failure depending upon their affiliations. At the same time, some facts cannot be denied such as the drop in volumes by about fifty percent in welfare relative to AFDC and TANF in spite of the several provisions that extended benefits external to the given rules. According to Boushey (2011), it is now evident that most of the former welfare recipients do not have work and those that are working earn between $6 and $8 per hour, which is too meager to sustain a family. The extent of poverty has increased amongst working families despite the decline in over all poverty rates. Families headed by single working mothers are the worst effected in this regard. Moreover, poverty has become more severe during the last many years for families that were already in deep poverty. Many families that were receiving welfare prior to the implementation of PRWORA are likely to experience greater hardships after they leave welfare. Over 33 percent of families getting welfare experienced situations when they were unable to get adequate food and the required medical care as compared to the position prior to the introduction of PRWORA. Families having one full time worker stood just a little less chance of experiencing one or more of such difficulties in comparison with the present welfare families. Almost 25 percent of families that became ineligible for welfare and had a single earning member went without adequate food, housing and the essential medical facilities. Most of the objectives of PRWORA pertained to addressing the high rate of single parenthood amongst poor households. It is noteworthy that after the implementation of PRWORA, there has been a decline in teen pregnancy although research has not substantiated that this decline was primarily because of the new welfare policy. However, it is known that almost ninety percent former recipients of welfare are mothers and the type of employment and earning they can get will determine the success of the new program in helping them to switch from welfare to work. The gender wage gap was reduced considerably during the 1980s in view of the fact that there was an over all decline in real wages for both genders although they declined more for men. With the growth of the US economy during the 1990s, the wage gap between men and women started stagnating and presently the wage gap is present, but is significantly less, given that on an average a woman earns $0.80 for every dollar earned by a man. The current gender gap is not because women are less skilled than men but because now women demonstrate higher propensity to attend college than men. Inequality in pay is due to the high extent of women’s segregation because of the nature of jobs. Hence, it can be said that women are now increasingly involved in competing with men in the job market. It is now required to eliminate the gender pay disparity because if single working mothers start earning as much as men there will be an increase of about 18 percent in the family income and the poverty will be reduced considerably (Bellavance, 2011). Conclusion Major reforms relative to PRWORA have been in welfare fields such as housing, health care, child care and food. The federal government has allocated larger budgets for child care programs, which is evident from the fact that federal funding for child care has increased by almost 100 percent since the PRWORA was implemented. But some problems remain such as only about 12 percent of eligible households receive financial help under provisions of the Child Care and Development Fund. All families are not able to get benefits of state and federal schemes relative to child care, while tax exemptions continue to be meager in assisting families to adequately meet child care costs. Additionally, the quality of child care is still poor because child care workers continue to be paid less. Even though there has been enhanced funding by the federal government in regard to child care, pay of child care workers has been stagnating, which has caused complexities in hiring and retaining competent and qualified teachers. List of References Bellavance, Michelle. 2011. Innovations in Welfare Reform, http://www.uvm.edu/~vlrs/doc/welfare_reform.htm, Accessed on 18 December, 2011. Boushey, Heather. (2011). The effects of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act on working families, http://www.epi.org/publication/webfeatures_viewpoints_tanf_testimony/, Accessed on 18 December, 2011. NASW. (1996). PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND WORK OPPORTUNITY RECONCILIATION ACT OF 1996, (Public Law 104-193), SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS, National Association of Social Workers Read More