Designed for Conditions That Don’t Exist

The graph above was taken from this post by Donna Pavetti at RealClearPolicy. “TANF” is the federal program Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Basically, it’s what now exists of what used to be called “welfare”. How do you interpret it?

Here’s how I interpret it. The program was working fine as long as jobs were being created rapidly but when that stopped in 1999 or thereabouts and the states changed their budgets to adapt to new conditions and consistent with their own priorities (mostly paying for healthcare and past and present employees) it stopped working.

I’d also like a little more detail on the definition of the groups represented by the graph. It could be that some of the changes were a consequence of changing demographics within the target population.

There’s really no substitute for economic growth in promoting the general welfare, to use the Constitution’s phrase. As long as policymakers are content with our present slow/no economic growth, policies that were adopted assuming faster growth, which include TANF and Social Security, won’t function as they were intended. They were designed for conditions that don’t exist.