The New World of Welfare

The Brookings Welfare Reform & Beyond initiative is sponsoring a discussion among key members of Congress on their goals for next year’s reauthorization of the sweeping 1996 welfare reform law. Congress will begin work on the legislation next winter and must complete its work by October 1, 2002. Participants in the discussion are expected to address several major issues that are likely to be central during next year’s debate. These include the question of full funding for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families block grant, whether states should take steps to encourage marriage, whether reduction of child poverty should be adopted as an official goal of federal welfare policy, what actions can be taken to assure that families leaving welfare receive food stamps and Medicaid, what actions can be taken to help families that are struggling to make the transition from welfare to work, and what can be done to help poor and low-income working families advance to better jobs.

Brookings is sponsoring this welfare reform discussion to mark the publication of a volume of papers by leading scholars and policy analysts on welfare reform titled The New World of Welfare. Papers in the volume examine the results of the 1996 reforms and make specific recommendations about policies Congress should consider during the reauthorization debate next year. The volume was edited by Rebecca Blank, Dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan and Ron Haskins, a Senior Fellow at Brookings and a Senior Consultant at the Annie E. Casey Foundation.