The Travel Behavior and Needs of the Poor: A Study of Welfare Recipients in Fresno County, California, MTI Report 01-23

The passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 fundamentally transformed the provision of social assistance in the United States. Gone is Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), a program that entitled needy families with children to an array of benefits and public services. In its place is Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), a program that abolishes federal entitlements, provides flexible block grants to the states, mandates tough new work requirements, and imposes a five-year lifetime limit on the receipt of public assistance. Current welfare programs mandate employment for most recipients and offer temporary financial aid and short-term employment assistance to help recipients transition into the labor market. As a result of this fundamental restructuring of the U.S. welfare system, millions of welfare recipients are required to enter the paid labor market. Public agencies must establish programs to transition recipients into the labor market or risk dramatic increases in poverty rates. A growing number of studies suggest that reliable transportation-whether automobiles or public transit-is essential to linking welfare participants to employment opportunities. The purpose of this study is to: Understand the travel behavior of welfare participants; Examine strategies by which welfare participants overcome their transportation barriers; Identify the transportation needs of welfare participants living in the Central Valley; Examine the relationship between access to reliable transportation and employment status; and Develop a set of policy and planning recommendations to improve the transportation options of welfare recipients and other low-wage workers living in smaller, more rural, metropolitan areas

How to Improve Erie County’s Work First Program

The major shift to a welfare to work model happened in 1996 with the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. This federal law aimed to decrease dependency on public assistance by – among other things – forcing people to work for their assistance. Erie County did not need this Act to focus on work. Erie County Department of Social Services has been enforcing work requirements and operating as a work first county since 1988. In 1994, the County created its Welfare to Work Leadership Council. The goal of the council is to bring the community together to find jobs and training for employable public assistance applicants. The two defining programs in Erie County are Jobs Club for the applicant and Workfare for the recipient

Noncitizen Eligibility for Federal Public Assistance: Policy Overview and Trends

[Extent] The extent to which residents of the United States who are not U.S. citizens should be eligible for federally funded public aid has been a contentious issue since the 1990s. This issue meets at the intersection of two major policy areas: immigration policy and welfare policy. The eligibility of noncitizens for public assistance programs is based on a complex set of rules that are determined largely by the type of noncitizen in question and the nature of services being offered. Over the past 18 years, Congress has enacted significant changes in U.S. immigration policy and welfare policy. Congress has exercised oversight of revisions made by the 1996 welfare reform law (the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, P.L. 104-193)—including the rules governing noncitizen eligibility for public assistance that it established—and legislation covering programs with major restrictions on noncitizens’ eligibility (e.g., food stamps/SNAP, Medicaid). This report deals with the four major federal means-tested benefit programs: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps), the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cash assistance, and Medicaid. Laws in place for the past 18 years restrict the eligibility of legal permanent residents (LPRs), refugees, asylees, and other noncitizens for most means-tested public aid. Noncitizens’ eligibility for major federal means-tested benefits largely depends on their immigration status; whether they arrived (or were on a program’s rolls) before August 22, 1996, the enactment date of P.L. 104- 193; and how long they have lived and worked in the United States

生活保護の受給要件である親族扶養義務の今日的意義

The one of the principles of the Public Assistance Act is the supplementary nature of welfare (Public Assistance Act, Article 4). "Duty of kinship support," in terms of the receipt of public assistance, was established (National Assistance Act Article 4 Clause 2) on the assumption that "any support given by a person responsible for support prescribed by the Civil Code (Act No. 89 of 1896) and any assistance prescribed by any other Act shall be provided in precedence to public assistance under this Act". Today\u27s applicants for welfare face greatly changed conditions in terms of duty of kinship support, and family social and economic environment to when the Public Assistance Act was enacted in 1950. Nevertheless, administrative guidance for the enforcement of the duty of kinship support for the receipt of welfare dates from that time. However, 60 years have now passed since the enactment of the Public Assistance Act and, due to the conditions imposed by the duty of kinship support for the receipt of welfare, the welfare administrators faces various problems and various difficulties arise in their response to welfare applicants. In this study I discuss the deficiency in the supplementary nature of welfare in duty of kinship support from three standpoints: 1) changes in family structure, 2) changes in the public attitude to kinship support and 3) the obsolete nature of the welfare office\u27s handling of the duty of kinship support. As a result, in order to adapt to today\u27s family situation and public awareness, I emphasize the necessity of changing of the notion "duty of kinship support" to that of" duty of life preservation" when dealing with the receipt of welfare

Spotlight on Assistance Dogs-Legislation, Welfare and Research

Assistance dogs are a very diverse group of working dogs that are trained to assist humans with different types of disabilities in their daily lives. Despite these dogs' value for humankind, research on their welfare status, cognitive and behavioural capacities, selection criteria for the best fitting individuals, effective training and management practices, and genetic issues are so far lacking. This review highlights the need to address these topics and to promote progress in legal issues around assistance dogs. The topic of assistance dogs is approached comprehensively by outlining the current status of knowledge in three different dimensions: (1) the legal dimension, outlining important legal issues in the EU and Australia; (2) the welfare dimension; and (3) the dimension of research, covering assistance dog selection and training. For each of these three dimensions, we discuss potential approaches that can be implemented in the future in order to support assistance dog working performance, to protect the dogs' welfare, and to improve our knowledge about them. Additionally, there remain many legal issues, such as the presence of assistance dogs in public areas, the resolution of which would benefit both the assistance dog and the owner with disability

The Effects of Maternal Welfare Receipt on Children’s Development

Over the past 25 years, welfare and other public policies for families living below the poverty line have developed a primary objective of promoting parents’ self-sufficiency. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), passed in 1996, was a milestone in this effort, limiting the number of years that families can receive federal cash welfare assistance and requiring most of them to participate in work-related activities to be eligible for such assistance. This new emphasis on work was one of the main reasons for the dramatic decline in welfare dependency during the late 1990s. The new legislation, however, also prompted an extensive debate over the effects of welfare reform on the cognitive development and well-being of children. [excerpt

The Decline in Welfare Receipt in New York City: Push vs. Pull

To evaluate the initial effects of welfare reform in New York City, we use the Current Population Survey to compare benefit receipt, earnings, and income among vulnerable households in 1994-95 and 1997-99. Overall, there were drops in public assistance and Food Stamps receipt, but the proportion getting Medicaid remained stable. Citizens and noncitizens lost welfare at similar rates, but the decline was significantly greater for Hispanic households than blacks, and was greatest among Puerto Ricans. Both the proportion with earnings and average earnings rose for Hispanics, but earnings did not increase for vulnerable blacks and whites. The sharp difference between Hispanics and blacks resulted in the convergence of Hispanics' higher welfare rates and lower incomes toward those of blacks. This convergence represents both the "pull" of a tighter labor market, together with improvements in Hispanics' education levels and shifts in family structure, and "push" of tighter administrative procedures.Assistance; Food Stamp; Medicaid; Public Assistance; Welfare