/Reforming TANF is key to ensure economic favor for everyone.

Centering Needs of Black Mothers and Children in TANF Would Benefit All Families With Children

This nation’s history of exclusion, marginalization, and social and economic control of Black single mothers and their children has prevented cash assistance from serving as an effective anti-poverty program and continues to do so. When adults lose a job or experience some other crisis, they have only limited access to cash assistance. All children, but especially Black and brown children, need a strong set of antiracist economic supports for their long-term well-being. TANF has a role to play, but it must be reimagined.

Racial discrimination in employment, housing, education, and social programs has contributed to higher rates of poverty and insecurity among Black families and other families of color. Racism and low, unstable income contribute to toxic stress (the excessive or prolonged activation of the body’s “fight or flight” response) in children, research now shows.[174] Stress from racist experiences is associated with increased inflammation, which can lead to chronic disease.[175] Black and other parents of color constantly worrying about their ability to pay the rent or afford food cannot effectively buffer children from stresses caused by racism or deprivation; this persistent adversity can overload children’s bodies and minds, with negative long-term consequences for their health, education, and employment.[176]

Robust anti-poverty programs that boost income can promote stability, relieving parents’ stress and improving children’s academic, health, and economic outcomes, a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report on reducing childhood poverty finds.[177] But those programs must be antiracist and ensure equitable access and supports for all families.

Other anti-poverty programs, like SNAP and refundable tax credits, have grown significantly and have had a tremendous impact on reducing hardship, especially for Black and Latinx families and individuals.[178] Yet families with little or no cash income still need monthly cash assistance to be more economically secure. They have needs that may vary month to month — diapers, period products, personal hygiene and cleaning supplies, and utilities, for example — and that only cash can cover. Providing adequate, unconditional cash assistance also affirms the dignity of parents and caregivers and presumes they know how to best care for their children.

A reimagined TANF program also could complement a permanent extension of the American Rescue Plan’s temporary Child Tax Credit expansion.[179] An expanded Child Tax Credit would give households with low or moderate incomes additional resources to cover the expenses associated with child-rearing. But when a family falls on hard times, they need additional cash assistance from TANF to prevent a downward spiral that can result in eviction and homelessness among other negative outcomes. Together, an expanded Child Tax Credit and TANF could provide meaningful cash resources for families to cover their monthly essentials and maintain economic stability when their other income drops or is very low.

In short, cash assistance for when families experience a crisis needs to be a critical component of our economic support system. However, TANF, with its history of anti-Black racism, must be fundamentally reformed by adopting a Black Women’s Best framework. Black mothers need a cash program that provides stability through life’s challenges, protects their children from hardship, and affirms and supports parents’ autonomy over their families and careers. When this is available to Black mothers, it will mean that we have crafted a TANF program that works well for all families facing significant economic distress.

This work cannot be left entirely to the states; federal changes are essential to advance racial equity nationally and ensure a stable economic foundation for all families.

For a reimagined TANF program, we envision:

Establishing a federal minimum benefit so that no family of any race falls below a certain income level. TANF benefits vary greatly by state and the lowest benefits tend to be in Southern states, which have larger Black populations and deeper-seated legacies of enslavement and Jim Crow. A minimum federal benefit would establish a necessary floor to mitigate these disparities and better protect Black, brown, and white families.

Barring states’ mandatory work requirements. Conditioning benefits on participation in mandatory work programs is one of TANF’s most racially driven policies, one that started with enslavement and continued with coerced labor practices that continued long beyond emancipation. Federal policymakers should eliminate federal requirements that states impose sanctions and mandate participation in work activities. To ensure that states don’t maintain these policies even without a federal requirement, federal policymakers also should bar states from imposing mandating work as a condition of eligibility for cash assistance and imposing sanctions for non-participation.

Barring behavioral requirements, time limits, other eligibility exclusions. Rooted in racism and sexism, these provisions demean families by assuming that adults are irresponsible and do not want what is best for their families. Worse, they often take away assistance from families that need it. Some also disproportionally hurt Black women and Black families. Eliminating them would remove the concept of “deservingness” from a program that should be designed to support parents and protect children from destitution.

Refocusing TANF agencies on helping families address immediate crises and improving long-term well-being. TANF is better suited than other economic security programs to provide the support that parents need to achieve the goals they set for themselves and their families. (For example, tax credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit or the Child Tax Credit cannot provide services to families.) Yet it must do a much better job of helping families in crisis address their immediate needs and setting them up for long-term stability. The program should move away from mandatory work programs that do very little to help mothers find work that lift them and their children out of poverty and toward voluntary support programs that align with a family’s goals and needs. Resources that TANF agencies previously used to monitor compliance with mandatory work requirements could instead support families in new and meaningful ways.

Changing TANF’s funding structure to retarget TANF resources to basic assistance, address funding inequities, and prevent erosion over time. States have used TANF resources to pay for other things beside cash aid to families; notably, states with high Black populations tend to spend less on basic assistance and to redirect these funds elsewhere. Federal policymakers based the original TANF block grant allocation on states’ AFDC spending amounts; this approach locked in some of the lowest TANF funding levels per poor child, for states where Black children disproportionately live.[180] Furthermore, the original block grant formula has lost about 40 percent of its value since its creation due to inflation, which makes it harder for states that want to adequately invest in families to do so. Federal policymakers should require states to spend a greater share of TANF resources on basic assistance, establish an equitable formula allocation, and increase the TANF block grant and index it to inflation to encourage states, especially those with lower benefits and higher Black populations, to increase benefits and serve more families.

Remaking cash assistance requires undoing the consequences — and power — of racist ideas and policies that have marginalized mothers and their families, Black people especially. A cash aid program that centers equity for Black women would, as the “Black Women Best” framework posits, promote the economic security of all families with the least income.