| U.S. Welfare Caseloads |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Thursday, Aug. 20, 1998
Contact: Michael Kharfen, (202) 401-9215
HHS ANNOUNCES WELFARE CASELOAD CONTINUES UNPRECEDENTED
DECLINE AND RELEASES EMPLOYMENT RETENTION AND ADVANCEMENT GRANTS
HHS Secretary Donna E. Shalala today announced that welfare caseloads
have declined to approximately 8.4 million recipients and slightly
over 3 million families as of June 1998.
At the same time, Secretary Shalala announced grants to 13 states
to help improve job retention and career advancement for parents
on welfare.
Since January 1993, the number of recipients on welfare has dropped
by more than 41 percent, including a decline of more than 30 percent
since the enactment of the welfare reform law on August 22, 1996.
There are 5.7 million fewer recipients on the welfare rolls since
President Clinton took office, and 3.8 million fewer welfare recipients
since the passage of the 1996 law. The rate of decline remains
strong with nearly 2 percent reductions each month, almost double
the rate for the same period in 1997.
"Several new state studies as well as data from the Census
Bureau are showing that more and more of those adults leaving
the welfare rolls are getting jobs," said Secretary Shalala.
"Reforming welfare is about making sure families have the
tools they need to go to work -- and to stay there. The grants
we are announcing today will encourage states to improve their
efforts for parents to stay in work and advance in their jobs."
In its newest initiative, HHS is issuing grants to 13 states to
provide technical assistance on sharing information about existing
job retention strategies for welfare recipients and the methods
for evaluating these strategies with current and former welfare
recipients. This investment will help states devise successful
welfare to work programs.
The states receiving $50,000 planning grants each are: California,
Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island,
South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington State and
Wisconsin. Additionally, a contract will go to The Lewin Group
for technical and evaluation assistance to grantees for the purpose
of defining, developing, and refining job retention and advancement
intervention strategies, expert technical and evaluation assistance,
review of field operations of grantees to document job retention/advancement-focused
program elements, and other supports.
"These important grants will promote creative state strategies
for innovative model programs that will achieve welfare reform's
most vital goal that families will obtain stable jobs, increase
their earnings and break the cycle of welfare dependency,"
said Olivia A. Golden, HHS assistant secretary for children and
families. "The grants also reinforce the administration's
priority for states to compete for the new welfare law's high
performance bonus which will reward states for moving welfare
recipients into jobs and retaining and advancing in jobs and earnings."
HHS has designed a national welfare reform evaluation strategy
that invests resources to build knowledge on the results of welfare
reform implementation, to study the critical importance of supports
like child care and child support that improve the transition
from welfare to work, and to promote successful strategies on
how best to help families on welfare keep and advance in jobs.
Recent examples of these efforts include rigorous evaluations
of the preliminary success of Oregon and Los Angeles County welfare
to work programs, a five state review of the shift to "work
first" approaches and a report on models of advancing career
track jobs for welfare recipients.
The First Annual Report to Congress on the Temporary Assistance
for Needy Families (TANF) program released on August 5th, 1998
shows a dramatic increase in the number of welfare recipients
who have gone to work. Data from the Census Bureau's Current Population
Survey show that the rate of employment of individuals on welfare
in one year who were working in the following year increased by
nearly 30 percent between 1996 and 1997. As a result 1.7 million
adults on welfare in 1996 were working in March 1997.
The Report to Congress also found that not only has the proportion
of welfare recipients working increased, but that families moving
from welfare to work also enjoy increases in income. The report
also finds that on average states are spending more per person
on welfare to work efforts than they did before the passage of
the 1996 welfare reform law.
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Note: All HHS press releases, fact sheets and other press materials are
available at http://www.hhs.gov/news.
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