Beyond Welfare and Work: TANF’s Enduring Relevance in Social and Family Policy Research

Thirty years after the 1996 welfare reform replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), scholarly and policy attention to the new program has waned. This article argues that despite its diminished reach, low cash benefits, and fragmented implementation, TANF remains central to understanding the evolution and current structure of the US social safety net. We contend that TANF’s enduring relevance lies in four defining features: its provision of cash assistance to families, block grant structure and devolution to states, administrative complexity, and work requirements. Each feature provides important insights into policy design, inequality, and family well-being and also highlights opportunities for reform. Drawing on existing research, we demonstrate how these features shape access, outcomes, and disparities across states and populations. We conclude that renewed research on TANF is essential to improving the policy and to informing broader debates about cash transfers, administrative burden, and the future of family policy in the United States.