How Should We Help the Poorest Children of Single Mothers?

The analysis by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities of the first decade of “welfare reform”, 1995-2005 leaves me severely conflicted:

Average incomes fell significantly among the poorest children in single-mother families in the first decade after enactment of the 1996 welfare law, reflecting a large drop in cash assistance through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant. These findings provide further evidence that supports the growing agreement among researchers that TANF’s record has been mixed. Since the welfare law’s enactment, the overall poverty rate for single-parent families has fallen — though many other factors besides TANF influenced this trend — but the poorest families and children have become worse off. Previous analyses have found that the share of children in “deep poverty,” with incomes below half of the poverty line, climbed during the welfare law’s first decade.

What should the policy be? When you subsidize something you get more of it. Do we want to subsidize indigence and families headed by single mothers? If all of the studies of the effects of immigration on incomes agree on one thing it’s that unrestricted immigration of low-skilled individual reduces incomes among the lowest income earners, especially the previous cohort of immigrants without skills. Did welfare reform cause the declines in income or was that a consequence of unrestricted immigration of immigrants without skills? Was welfare reform itself a response to that immigration?

What’s the best way to help the poorest children of single mothers?