No Progress in Helping Poor Families

“Back when I was a kid, winter was really winter . . .”  These types of reminisces cloud adulthood.  It’s hard to tell how much of your memory you can trust.  Sometimes, statistics help clarify the disparities.

In the case of the economy, we all know that we are facing hard times, but how do current programs to help destitute families compare to twenty years ago?  Have the programs become more efficient and therefore more helpful?  Are the systems in place like well-oiled machines?

The Oregon Center for Public Policy recently published a press release that as a result of welfare reform 15 years ago, Oregon is helping far fewer poor families than it once did.  Any changes in resources were nothing compared to the diminishing effects of welfare cuts in the 1990s.

The analysis by the Washington, D.C.-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) found that in the years just prior to the 1996 welfare reform legislation, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program helped 60 families for every 100 Oregon families in poverty.  By 2008-2009, the program — now named Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) — helped only 35 out of every 100 poor families, even when factoring in a significant caseload increase following the recession.

This means that in the fiscal year 1994-95 Oregon’s program helped 40,131 families, while only 25,795 families received help in fiscal year 2009-10.

“A strong TANF program helps keeps Oregon families safe and stable during hard economic times, but unfortunately we have allowed this important safety net to wither,” said Chuck Sheketoff, executive director of the Oregon Center for Public Policy.

“Oregon families have to be much poorer to qualify for TANF compared to when the program came into being, and the benefits don’t go as far in meeting basic needs as they once did,” Sheketoff said.