Caseload Trends & Dynamics

The Welfare Indicators Act of 1994 (Public Law 103-432) requires the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to prepare an annual report to Congress on indicators and predictors of “welfare dependence.” That Act requires the report to include three programs: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program (which replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)

Key Points

The child care subsidy program provides critical support to families to support parental labor force participation as well as child development. This study provides a historical view of the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of parents who received subsidies over the 2009-2013 period.

This report provides welfare dependence indicators through 2019 for most indicators and through 2020 for other indicators, reflecting changes that have taken place since enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996.

This brief explores important trends in the child care industry during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic and places those trends in a historical context. Specifically, we find:

Participation in the social safety net varies widely across programs—from 15 percent among eligibles for subsidized child care (CCDF) to over 75 percent for Medicaid/CHIP and EITC.  Participation differs by race and ethnicity, yet patterns are not consistent. In general rates differ more across programs than between race-ethnic groups.

This Brief provides an examination of the amount of time that low-income families from 32 states received child care subsidies.  These families began receiving government-funded child care subsidies during Fiscal Year 2012, prior to the reauthorization of the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) Act.  In general, families utilized child care subsidy programs for short time p

This brief describes the research methods used to produce the findings in Substance Use, the Opioid Epidemic, and Child Welfare Caseloads: A Mixed Methods Study. It is a part of a series of briefs that discuss different aspects and issues surrounding the relationship between substance use disorders and the child welfare system.

This report provides welfare dependence indicators through 2015 for most indicators and through 2016 for some indicators, reflecting changes that have taken place since enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in 1996.

This study examined the relationship between parental substance misuse and child welfare caseloads, which began rising in 2012 after more than a decade of decline.