TANF Trends and Its Oversight—Welfare Assistance Continues to Shift Away from Cash Assistance (interactive graphic)

When you think of “welfare,” you’re probably thinking of TANF. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families provides a wide array of assistance to families with children in financial need. This includes everything from cash, housing, and utilities to food and child care supports, as well as job training and help with transportation.

TANF programs are run by states, which receive funding through federal block grants and have broad flexibility over how to provide assistance. In the last decade or so, we’ve reported about shifts in how states are using these funds.

Today’s WatchBlog post looks at our latest work on trends with TANF funding use and the oversight of state spending. 

How TANF Funding Flows from the Federal Government to Families

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How are states using TANF funds?

When state TANF programs began in the 1990s, more than 75% of the funding went directly to participants (families) as checks or vouchers designed to meet their ongoing basic needs. Over time, states have moved away from direct payments to families and increasingly focused on “non-assistance” services. These include, for example, jobs programs, education and training, transportation, child care, refundable tax credits, and emergency aid for housing, energy, and clothing. Under non-assistance services, payments can be made to programs instead of individual TANF families.

Our interactive graphic, available here, shows trends in TANF spending from FY 2015 to 2022—by year and category.

States can also carry over unspent TANF funds from year to year. The portion of these unspent funds has increased in recent years, doubling from FY 2015 to 2022.

TANF Total Unspent Balances by All States, FY 2015-2022

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In a new report, we looked at how seven states are using non-assistance funds. Each state provided job training services, such as resume writing and interview preparation. But states also have the flexibility to fund many other services. For example, one state we looked at uses funds to pay for child welfare services aimed at keeping families intact and assisting teen parents. Another state uses these funds to administer an early childhood intervention program that serves children with developmental delays. Federal TANF funding is often combined with state TANF funds to support programs.

State decisions on how to use funding were made in part based on the priorities of their governors and legislatures and other factors like the needs of the people they serve.

What information are states sharing about TANF and how could this be used to improve oversight?

States and service providers collect information on how TANF funds are being used as well as data on participation, eligibility, and outcomes. But states aren’t sharing information with each other to better understand program challenges and promising practices. And, in many cases, the data collected wasn't systematically reported to state and federal agencies for TANF purposes. This makes it very difficult to use this information to understand whether programs and services are working well and meeting families’ needs.

What information is needed to improve oversight? More complete data could help. States are required to report overall TANF expenditures to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which oversees the program. But when we looked at these reports from states, we found that several had missing or had incomplete information about how funds were used. We also found that states’ reports didn’t include the details needed to fully understand how funds were used.

HHS could do more to ensure states submit complete information. It could also identify additional reporting requirements that could enhance the completeness of states’ reporting. And HHS could work with states to help them share information, which would help states identify promising practices and mutual challenges in using data collected on non-assistance services.

But HHS doesn’t have the authority to gather more detailed data about TANF from the states, which could strengthen its oversight efforts. Its authority to collect information from states is limited by law. Because of this, we think Congress should consider granting HHS authority to collect additional information for TANF oversight.

Learn more about our work on TANF oversight by checking out our recent reports on trends, oversight and information sharing, and our interactive graphic. 

• GAO’s fact-based, nonpartisan information helps Congress and federal agencies improve government. The WatchBlog lets us contextualize GAO’s work a little more for the public. Check out more of our posts at GAO.gov/blog.
   
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