STEP FORWARD - Shriver Center

By Margaret Stapleton, Senior Attorney

Backstory: In February, the Financial Times and then the New York Times reported on research showing that “poverty in early childhood poisons the brain” leading to lifelong impairments. Last month, the New York Times reported on the correlation between poverty and problems with education. Poverty causes families to move; thus their children change schools frequently. This disrupts not only their children’s education but also the education of all the other children in the school. This is bad news for all the children and for the schools struggling to meet federal No Child Left Behind expectations.

What is the bedrock government program for low-income families (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF) doing about this? Not much, I’m afraid. Ending welfare as we know it created the TANF program in 1996, and the federal government gives $20.5 billion to the states in TANF block grants annually. But the states spend less than half of their block-grant funds on cash assistance to low-income families and divert the rest to worthy (e.g., child care) and less worthy purposes. And the grants to needy families are miserably, appallingly low. Illinois, for example, gives a family of three with no other income $396 per month-that’s 27 percent of the federal poverty level. Some states do better, but not all that much better; some do worse.

It’s time for the states’ TANF programs to take assisting low-income families seriously and redirect the bulk of their federal block-grant funds to increasing the monthly benefits for families. Illinois is on the verge of taking a small step in the right direction. In 2006 the Shriver Center and other Illinois TANF advocates began an uphill effort to increase Illinois TANF grants. Two years later, a 9 percent increase for the fiscal year that begins this month is in the works, but not yet certain due to state budget veto battles. Illinois and many other states could double, triple, and even quadruple the grants and still leave their families under the poverty level. But TANF grants that give families some economic security are the best antidote to the poison and the disruptions that currently plague them and have short- and long-run consequences for us all.

Tags: Education, TANF

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Welfare and Work Supports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.