Disparities in the U.S. Education System

 “My name is _________________” and as a college student I am writing to bring your attention to the problem of how Federal Student Aid exhibits inequities. Financial aid is an attempt to address a contemporary social problem of college affordability. Governments can directly subsidize education by allocating grants, funding, and tax breaks to universities, or governments can give students help with paying for their education through financial aid, and let money be allocated to schools where students choose to attend.  But our system fails to address the rising cost of higher education. 

Most of the rapid increase in the higher education price index (HEPI) came between 1980 and 2010, three decades when the HEPI generally went up faster than the consumer prince index (CPI).  From 2010 and 2019 the higher education price index averaged 2.2% in annual increases, which was close to the CPI.  In the most recent five years, the HEPI was significantly lower than the CPI in 2022 and 2023, and only very slightly higher than the CPI in 2020, 2021, and 2024.  Federal aid has decreased over the past decade, with total federal grant aid decreasing by 7% (in inflation-adjusted outlays) and Pell grants specifically decreasing 5% (inflation adjusted) between 2014 and 2024 (Trends in College Pricing). State funding for public universities has also declined (in inflation-adjusted terms) since 2000, and public universities have covered the loss of state funding with increased tuition, especially in the years between 2001 and 2016. 

The increase in relative costs of university and the decrease in federal and state funding for colleges and for grants to students has caused a student debt crisis. This crisis is experienced more painfully by families with fewer assets, as they are forced to borrow and use debt to cover the cost of education, whereas families with more wealth may use some of their wealth to pay for college or may secure better rates on loans for college. Since wealth, like income, is a factor that influences how much education a student can affords, inequalities in wealth exacerbate inequalities in college debt. Disparities in income are well-known: Black households had median incomes that were 60.5% the incomes of non-Hispanic white families, while Hispanic households had incomes at 77% of non-Hispanic white households (Census Income Report).  But the wealth gap is much more: The Census Bureau reported that in 2024 Black householders have a median wealth of $24,520, which is only 10% of the median wealth of White households ($250,400).  Thus, to the extent that funding for financial aid and universities cause access to higher education to be highly influenced by issues of who can afford the expense, the inequities related to wealth and race will shape access, and inadequate funding for financial aid will perpetuate income and wealth disparities rooted in historical discrimination and oppression long after the blatant discrimination and oppression are removed.

 The key sections I will be covering deals with the contemporary social problem of Federal Student Aid and how historical foundation’s structure inequity, cultural norms, policy and institutional mechanisms.

The GI Bill (1944) after World War II, was made to benefit World War II veterans with their transition back to civilian life, including tuition assistance for education. However, African American veterans had limited access to higher education because the racial inequality in the GI Bill has created wealth gaps that impact FAFSA eligibility applicants today (Hunter, 2015). The GI Bill's preferences for White applicants gave advantages in lifetime earning and wealth accumulation to White veterans, and limited the ability of many Black veterans to build generational wealth through education and homeownership. This results in fewer assets to pass down, leading to lower incomes and wealth for many  Black families today.  The FAFSA determines eligibility by a formula that includes information about family assets, but those calculations to not consider the value of non-liquid assets such as a student's primary residence (the home owned by a student's parents) ore retirement accounts.  Yet, the main asset that White families tend to have, and Black families are less likely to have, is ownership of a primary residence. In 2021, 70% of White householders had equity in their own home, but only 39% of Black householders had home ownership assets (Census Bureau report on Wealth). 

Another policy that sounds fair but ended up being unfair in practice, for example, is the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). It sounded fair because it was known for demonstrating equality, but it ended up doing the opposite in practice by shifting power and decision-making away from the national government to individual state governments (Black, 2017). States have historically failed to direct educational assets to improve the educations for poor and racial or ethnic minority students, and the federal government's role in promoting efforts to equalize educational investment and outcomes across class and racial groups was terminated in the ESSA.

Today White Americans receive more financial aid then African Americans and Hispanics due to their having more financial privileges and higher education resources (e.g., private schools). For example, Dr. Shermer (2022) raises the issue that the Federal Student Aid application does not ask about retirement savings or home equity. Caucasians are more likely to have retirement savings and home equity than African Americans and Hispanics; by not asking those two questions, financial aid is providing more aid to Caucasians than African Americans and Hispanic students. Making it more likely for African Americans and Hispanic students to either borrow money for college and or not attend college at all. Schools and the justice system add to Federal Student Aid inequality also by only accepting students with strong academic records. Dr. Shermer (2022) mentioned states have certain levels of aid policies that show racial inequality by accepting students with strong academic records. Accepting students with strong academic records is a disadvantage for African Americans and Hispanics who may have a weaker high school grade point averages because they’re less inclined academically.

Student debt is another way African Americans and Hispanics experience economic inequality. They frequently take out student loans to pursue higher education for better job opportunities. Dr. Shermer (2022) noted that by the time students graduate from college, they cannot yet escape the racial wealth gap because they struggle with loan repayment which hinders their ability to build financial stability. This leads to long-term consequences that prevent economic mobility.

For example, I have an African American family member who has personally encountered this problem. As an adolescent, I saw my brother struggle to find an HVAC job after graduating from college. He was denied by multiple HVAC companies because he did not have two years of experience. His argument was “I have the degree; how do you expect me to get experience if you will not hire me?” After my brother was denied the job, he uprooted his life, and moved to Orlando, Florida where heating and cooling businesses thrive. However, he experienced the same hardships as he did in Illinois. He accumulated more than $20,000 dollars in debt due to our parent’s income reflected on his financial aid. Now he has moved back to Springfield, IL and works as a bus driver for Sangamon Mass Transit District. 

My brother continues discussing how out of all fifteen classmates (3 African American and 12 Caucasian) nine Caucasian students received internships and jobs, while the three African American students did not receive internships or jobs. My brother later found out that the same job he for which he was denied was offered to one of his Caucasian classmates with no experience, and his White classmate was hired a few weeks later. From my viewpoint, the job was hiring based on race rather than qualifications, which is considered illegal racial discrimination. Not only did my brother experience discrimination, he is also experiencing student debt, which is keeping him within his wage gap. Dr. Shermer (2022) mentioned Economic inequality is still around because African Americans and Hispanics are still relying on student loans and experiencing debt after graduating from college, which keeps them in their racial wealth gap. 

Changing policies within the United States could help make a difference. I believe Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) needs to change. ESSA has weakened equity standards by failing to address societal issues that contribute to educational inequality, such as racism, poverty, and school funding, according to Derek W. Black (2017). This makes it difficult for African Americans and Hispanics to access and succeed in college. The policy should stat that disadvantaged students receive the necessary resource regardless of their district’s local tax base (implement weighted student funding).

Sincerely,

References

Black, D. W. (2017). Abandoning the federal role in education: The every student succeeds act. California Law Review, 105(5), 1309-1374. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26577710 

Hunter, L. J. (2015). The untold story of the GI Bill: The experiences of African American veterans with attaining educational benefits through the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944. (Publication No. 3706461) [Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts Boston]. ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. https://uis.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/pqdtglobal1/dissertations-theses/untold-story-gi-bill-experiences-african-american/docview/1695261565/sem-2?accountid=14554 

Shermer, E. (2022, March 28). “Indentured students”: Higher education and the student loan crisis [video]. Kaltura. https://uis.mediaspace.kaltura.com/media/ECCE+Speaker+Series+-+Indentured+Students%3A+Higher+Education+and+the+Student+Loan+Crisis/1_biewu0gj  

This was supposed to be a paper explaining a policy or program in a fairly neutral way.  I guess the problem you were examining was inequalities in college funding for making higher education affordable to people, and you were pointing out that one of the policies that attempts to make college education more affordable (student loans) is perpetuating easier access to college for households with equity in a home that they own, and since White families are almost twice as likely to be home-owners, this gives White students an unfair advantage.  You are also saying that past programs to encourage education (the G.I. Bill) also unfairly distributed benefits in a way that privileged White students. 

An interesting point is the problem with college admission standards being tied to high school academic performance or scores on standardized tests. Systematic differences in K-12 educational outcomes that disadvantage Blacks and Hispanics will be repeated at University level, because universities want to admit students who have a demonstrated likelihood of succeeding (retention and graduation rates are used to determine the quality of a university).  Admitting students who are unlikely to return for a second or third semester, or who are unlikely to ever graduate, will become a long-term problem for a university, although such admissions strategies may unethically boost admission and fee revenues in the short-term.

Is there any argument to increase financial aid or change the way it is awarded?  Is there any innovative argument to abolish federal financial aid?  Policies could fund universities directly, and allow universities to lower the costs they charge to students.  That is, governments could fund higher education so that a year of school with housing and meals that costs $30,000 to provide might be priced at $2,000 or $3,000, and little or no financial aid would be required.  On the other hand, government funding for higher education could be eliminated so that universities charged the full $30,000 for tuition and fees, and instead of funding the universities, each person could apply for $26,000 in federal student financial loans for any five years of their lives at any point between the age of 17 and 77. Is one approach to higher education subsidy better than the other? 

Importance of Safe Staffing Ratios for Nurses

What I wanted to talk about today is the S.1113, which is nurse staffing standards for hospital patient safety and quality care act of 2023. A big problem in our hospital system in the United States is not having safe staffing in our hospitals, which then in turn leads to issues with the quality and the safety of patient care. An extraordinary factor that affected safe staffing ratios in our hospitals is the COVID 19 pandemic. The pandemic brought out a side of people, patients, and workers likewise, that had never been seen before. The pandemic caused a lot of workplaces to suffer staff burn out, and unfortunately has even cost some of the lives of our healthcare workers. Along with the pandemic, nurses continue to have troubles with unsafe working conditions, overloaded patient assignments with an unsafe number of patients to care for, and overwhelming workloads. 

To try to help alleviate this, lawmakers brought to attention and proposed S.1113- The Nurse Staffing Standards for Hospital Patient Safety and Quality Care Act of 2023. This bill was proposed by Senator Sherrod Brown. This is a bill aimed at establishing the maximum numbers of nurse-patient ratios in hospitals all around the nation. 

The goal of this bill that was proposed is to enhance patient outcomes, protect the well-being of nursing professionals by mandating safe staffing. The bill has sparked debate across the healthcare community, with supporters emphasizing its potential to enhance care quality and opponents warning of its financial and logistical burdens. Nurse staffing has been an issue for decades. Safe staffing ratios are a necessity, not a want or a need in healthcare, but they treat them like it’s not a big deal and not something that is important or critical. Staffing ratios have a lot to do with things that happen in healthcare, and they are as follows. Staffing ratios have to do with the number of patients assigned to a nurse to care for during their shift. Whenever there isn’t safe staffing, it can be detrimental to someone’s life. Non safe staffing leads to deaths, medical errors, burnout of the job, and patient neglect. This paper will elaborate a little on why safe staffing is so important and necessary.

When a nurse has too many patients, the quality of the care they provide dwindles drastically. You can just tell by a nurse’s attitude and their body language if they are overwhelmed or not. Proper and safe staffing allows nurses to give medications on time, monitor the patient’s vital signs more closely and efficiently, and be more prompt and able to respond to complications or problems that can arise. Reducing errors improves a patient’s recovery time and reduces patient errors. There have been multiple studies done that have shown and demonstrated that safe staffing ratios correlate to better patient outcomes. 

Other than having a positive effect on patient care, having safe staffing also allows nurses to be significantly more satisfied in their jobs and their careers, and also their mental health. Being a nurse is not only a mentally taxing job, but also it is a physical one. Nursing is one of the toughest professions out there. When a nurse is overworked and overwhelmed, there is not only job dissatisfaction, but there is also a risk for physical injury because they are trying to make sure everyone gets taken care of, no matter the risk to them or their life/body. If a nurse has safe and proper staffing, the chances of that nurse staying at the job they have and that companies’ retention rates being better, than if there is constant turnover of nurses due to unsafe staffing ratios and nurse burnout. 

Beyond patient care, staffing ratios significantly affect nurse satisfaction and mental health. Overworked nurses are at higher risk for burnout, job dissatisfaction, and even physical injury. According to the American Nurses Association (ANA), high workload and poor staffing are among the leading causes of turnover in the nursing profession. Burnout can lead to absenteeism, lower productivity, and a negative work environment, all of which further strain the healthcare system. Safe staffing is thus not only a patient safety issue but also a workforce sustainability concern.

There are not many states in the United States that have taken steps to put in effect nurse to patient ratios, but California has a law that mandates minimum staffing levels in hospitals. This went into effect for California in 2004 and this was the first in the nation. 

People can try to come back with an argument and say that it’s not feasible to have safe nurse to patient ratios because of the price of having to hire all of the nurses, but I don’t think that’s true. The amount of money it would take to hire the correct amount of nurses is pennies on the dollar to what lawsuits and such are for the hospital when things happen and go wrong with patients. 

To conclude this paper, staffing ratios that are safe are essential to have quality and effective patient care, having proper nurse wellbeing, and a healthcare system that works and is effective. As the medical community continues to grow and nurses are a career that are ever changing and always needed, safe staffing should remain at the very top of the concern for healthcare. 

If the Safe Staffing act is not passed, then I guess some sort of counter argument is winning the argument.  In fact, the 118th Congress could not get this passed House Resolution 2530 never got out of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, and in the Senate after it was introduced in March of 2023 it never got through the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.  The Democrats controlled the Senate in 2023, and the Republicans controlled the House, so neither party seems to have made safe staffing a priority.  

Perhaps the people in Congress do not want to establish national standards for staffing ratios, and they want to allow states to each set their own staffing ratios, or they think specific hospitals and clinics and other medical care facilities can set their own staffing ratios without interference from the Federal Government.  Who would enforce the staffing ratios?  

Your description of this policy makes it seem like an obviously good bill, and it is not easy to understand why the bill went nowhere in the 118th Congress.  I wonder if it will be re-introduced in the 119th and whether Congress could pass it now, since Sherrod Brown's party is in control of both bodies of Congress and the White House, perhaps the bill could pass. However, the 119th Congress has been in session for months now, and as far as I know, they haven't passed a single significant piece of legislation for Trump to sign.  It seems this should be a bipartisan bill. Is the American Nurses Association trying to get this bill or one like it introduced again?

Social workers need similar legislation to establish safe staffing levels in child protective services, schools, and hospitals. 

Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952

The policy I have picked to discuss is the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, also known as the McCarran-Walter Act. I feel like this is an important policy to discuss because there is a lot of talk on both sides about whether it is right or wrong to deport foreign students who are in the United States on a temporary student visa for protesting against Israel and starting riots on college campuses and causing the Jewish students to feel unsafe on campus. 

Honestly, I am not a Republican at all, but I do agree with some of the statements they have on this subject. Marco Rubio put it well in a press conference where he said, if these students had told us that they were coming into the United States to start riots on campuses, take over buildings, fight back when police are telling them to go home, then they never would have been allowed entry in the first place. All of these people are begging to come into the United States; they all claim they are in danger and they need help from the U.S., and then when some of them do stuff like this, it is very disrespectful. They know they can get away with it in the United States because if they went protesting in other countries around the world, they could easily come up missing and never be seen or heard from again. These 20-year-old kids thought they knew everything, and the ones that have been caught are going to get a huge reality check. These kids were all grad school students on their way to a bright future, and they weren’t smart enough not to mess with police when they tell them to do something? 

I just feel sorry for the ones who are caught because they will make examples out of them to try to prevent other foreign students here on student visas from doing the exact same thing. In fact, they are investigating students on visas in the U.S. in different Universities to see if they have any ties to Hamas or any other terror groups out there. They are violent people who do not care about human life. Hamas has no empathy for anyone or any decency; their whole objective is to inflict violence and terrorize people so that nobody questions anything they do based on fear, and these are the same people that these students in the United States of America are protesting for? I think it is nuts, I think all this killing is wrong, but you can’t expect to go into Israel and kill people and take hostages and terrorize the Jews and expect them not to come back and defend themselves. I mean, let’s be realistic: nobody would let that slide, so now Gaza has been blown up to pieces and it is not the Americans’ fault, it is not Israel’s fault, this is Hamas fault—they started all of this, and if these kids want to protest to anyone, it should be protesting against Hamas asking them to surrender and release all of the hostages. Those are the only people who should be getting their land vandalized and set on fire, and buildings destroyed, and leave the American Universities alone.

On the other hand, from the students’ point of view, I can see how this seems unfair that they have been arrested and are about to be deported because free speech in America does not seem to be a right of theirs. College is one of those times in your life that is controversial anyway, and when you add in something like a current and active war going on, it is a recipe for disaster. I understand people want to be seen and heard from, and have their opinions heard, but in my opinion, this is the worst place to do it is on the world stage, especially when you know that so many other people do not agree and you are going against the view of the country you are living in. In other words, you know you are ruffling some feathers, so don’t be surprised when you have a lot of people who are very angry with you. 

I do see how this could be intimidating for other students to feel like they can even get through school now without upsetting somebody. As much as I believe it is very stupid and disrespectful to our nation to vandalize the streets and occupy buildings, and go up against armed police. That is never a good idea, and once again, complete disrespect for law enforcement, who had nothing to do with any of this. 

I can also empathize with these foreign students. They have got to be living a rough life in the U.S. these days, having to constantly worry about I.C.E. coming after them for no reason, or being taken by surprise at any point in their day. It has to be terrifying to live like that, and most of these students are great people. Many of our foreign students are very bright and bring a lot of great knowledge along with them when they come to get educated in the United States. A lot of them are very family-oriented people who are very friendly and easy to get along with and make great neighbors as well as students and employees. I understand how these students who are under arrest feel like they have been cheated and that it is unfair, but the problem is, it has to stop somehow, and when these migrants were not even reacting to law enforcement, then honestly, deportation is really their only next card to play. 

Hopefully, after this blows over and these protestors learn that they cannot just come into this country and do whatever they feel like, and learn to respect the land and the people, then there really shouldn’t be any more issues. I do not necessarily agree with deporting these young college students on their first offense, maybe a couple months in jail and some time on probation would be better for them than just sending them home, but then again a lot of them were supposedly tied to Hamas, so if that is true they have to go, but it is just hard to tell what is true and what is not true anymore. It has become difficult to decipher the truth because each news platform tells the same story in 5 different versions, so you have to stay updated as much as possible so you know what is going on at all times.

This is a bit more informal than I would have liked.  It is a good reaction essay, but to present a neutral and descriptive paper about an issue, I think it would be better to try to establish what the issues are.

The policy that is controversial is the new policy of finding international students who have expressed opinions hostile to the state of Israel (or possibly merely hostile to the American government policy of supporting Israel) and then taking away their student visas and deporting them. 

You have touched on some of the main issues used to support or oppose this policy.

In support of the policy, I understand that some sources are reporting that students whose visas have been revoked and students who have been deported may have been doing two things: 1) they may have been intimidating other students with hate speech and creating a hostile environment at their schools; and 2) they may have broken laws such as trespassing laws by occupying buildings.  You mention that some students may have been engaged in physical fights with security guards or police, which would be a third allegation that the students had broken laws or harmed the educational atmosphere.  

If these allegations about the students are true, there could still be a controversy, since one position would be that these students ought to be treated like any American student would be treated, and given the discipline or fairly mild penalties our justice system employs in these sorts of situations.  

As for supporting Hamas with words or slogans or signs, I do not think that would be a crime if we really valued human rights and freedom of speech and conscience. Sending money to Hamas or accepting support from Hamas to spread their point-of-view in the United States could be illegal, since Hamas has been (correctly) identified as a terrorist organization. 

However, given the activities of the Israeli Defense Force, it seems to me there could be a plausible and reasonable argument that the Israeli military has descended to the same sort of behavior associated with Hamas.  That is, the IDF has become a terrorist organization, and receiving support from Israel or its public relations organizations in the United States could be made illegal, and giving any material support to Israel could be declared illegal.  That's not going to happen.  The American government is going to continue sending weapons to Israel, even if Israel starts to behave with a genocidal attack on Palestinians.  I'm just staying that someone could make a reasonable claim that there is some moral equivalence between Israel's current behavior in Gaza and the behavior of Hamas in Israel back in October of 2023. 

One argument against the policy is the claim that many of the students whose student visas have been revoked or who have been arrested and expelled from the United States did not do anything wrong.  They did not create a hostile learning environment or offer any hate speech against Jews or Israelis, nor did they occupy buildings, nor did they riot or damage property or assault anyone.  Some of them have simply written editorials opposing Israel's methods of killing Palestinians in Gaza or stealing land in the West Bank. If all the students do is voice opposition to Israeli policies or military practice, or America's support for Israeli's military, then that is surely an example of people using their freedom of speech.  In other words, they are using their natural liberty, bestowed by the Creator as an unalienable right, and only tyrannical power would punish them for using their natural right to free expression and freedom of conscience. 

I have heard people claim that criticism of Israel or “current criticisms against Israel or the Israeli Defense Forces” are all anti-semitic or anti-Jewish.  No doubt some such criticisms are indeed anti-Jewish and anti-semitic. But it makes no sense to claim that all criticisms against Israel these days are racist anti-Jewish.  I will criticize militaries that bomb refugee camps, kill children, blow up ambulances, and fight wars in which there is almost no regard for the risk of civilian casualties.  An army which claims there are no innocent civilians in the population of children and non-combatants in Gaza is not an army I think anyone should support.  There are international laws and rules of war, and an army or government that ignores international law or rules of war deserves condemnation, even if its cause is just, or it has historically been victimized by aggression of neighbors and terrorism used by its enemies. 

There are similar issues about freedom of speech and allowing or encouraging foreign students to come to the United States to study in our universities.  What about students from China who come to the United States and then create a hostile environment for Taiwanese students, Hong Kong students, Tibetan students, or Islamic students with central Asian backgrounds from Xinjiang?  What about Chinese students who come to our University of Illinois to learn about facial recognition software, and then take this learning back to China where they implement it in helping the Chinese Communist Party track dissidents and crack down on people who oppose the abuses of power by some members of the Chinese Communist Party?  What about Chinese students who come to America to study, but also to conduct industrial espionage?  Naturally, most Chinese students have no interest in those types of anti-democratic activities, but a few do.  And, certainly Chinese students have a right to express their opinions when they are here, even if their opinions are genocidal ideas about destroying Tibetan culture, mass murder of Taiwanese people, or elimination of the Uyghurs and their culture in Xindian? 

A strength of our country is that we allow criticism of our society and our government and its policies.  So, with that strength, we ought to allow foreign students to offer criticisms of us and what we do, and we should welcome their participation in demonstrations, editorial-writing, and participation in political practice to encourage America to change in ways that they think would be best.  However, an alternative perspective is that as guests in our country, foreign students ought to respect our culture and our government, and be quiet and mild in their criticisms of our society or our government's policies. This second approach emphasizes the idea that guests in our country must submit to having us dictate their behavior and speech, and we have a right to expect that foreign visitors conform to our expectations of how they should behave.  The first approach claims that our value on the freedom of expression and freedom to assemble and freedom of conscience is the primary value, and we should not care at all about whatever foreign residents or students say when they are in our country—it is a free country and everyone can say whatever they please.

I think that a policy of punishing people for writing editorials is unconstitutional.   Ejecting international students who express opinions at demonstrations or in editorials is a form of tyranny over the minds of people, exactly the sort of thing that Thomas Jefferson detested: "for I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." (letter to Benjamin Rush of September 23, 1800).

The same people who rightly condemned excesses in speech codes and woke language police scolding seem too eager to abandon their principles of holding freedom of speech sacred if the speech to be protected is condemnation of Israel or criticism of the United States. 

The McCarran-Walter Act upheld national origin quotas, but it allowed some Asians to immigrate to America, which had generally been difficult or forbidden since the 1880s. The 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Hart-Celler Act)  was the one that abolished national origin quotas that had favored northern and western Europeans over Africans, Asians, Eastern Europeans, and immigrants from the Western Hemisphere. 

TANF: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. A description of TANF as written by a real human being

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or “TANF”, as it’s often referred to, is a block grant program that was created by the United States Congress in August 1996. A block grant is money that the Federal government provides to states and local governments, intended to for use as part of specific programs and services. TANF was signed by then-President, Bill Clinton, with the intention of replacing the Aid to Families with Dependent Children Act, often referred to as the, “AFDC”. The AFDC provided cash benefits to families with children starting in 1935, before it was replaced by TANF as part of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, or “PRWORA”, for short. The PRWORA is also sometimes referred to as the Welfare Reform Act. To best understand TANF, it is useful to know information about the AFDC. (Pilon, 2025). 

The purpose of the AFDC - which developed from its first iteration, the Aid to Dependent Children, or “ADC” - was to provide cash assistance to support children who did not have sufficient financial support or care from guardians, due to absence, unemployment, disability or death. As part of the Social Security Act of 1935, the AFDC was the federal government’s response to the need for support among the most vulnerable of the country’s population, including children, the elderly and disabled and the unemployed. When AFDC was in place, all fifty United States, as well as the United States territories of the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico had programs that followed federal guidelines to establish and administer assistance to families in need. Today, all fifty states and the previously mentioned territories have TANF programs. Following 1935, several amendments were made to the Social Security Act: some to increase access to benefits, and others to decrease access to benefits (ASPE, 2025). 

Like AFDC, TANF was created to provide federal funding to the United States and federal territories to empower them to create financial assistance programs in support of qualifying families. While the AFDC was intended to provide financial assistance to children in need, enabling mothers to stay home and care for their children rather than being out of the home to earn living wages, TANF was created for the purpose of temporarily supporting parents as they sought gainful employment outside the home. TANF’s replacement of AFDC was motivated by the decades-long debate regarding government “social safety net” programs. This was partially due to an increase in the number of families receiving financial aid, rising from 3.7 million in 1988 to 4.9 million in 1992, as noted in CRS Report RL32760.  In the book Whose Welfare, Steven Teles discusses opinion polls which suggested that sentiment that welfare programs were receiving too much government funding rose at the same time that the number of eligible families increased (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1998). 

Individuals seeking TANF assistance must apply with their state or local TANF authorities and programs. This website features an interactive map, with information and links for each state’s TANF agencies and programs. TANF eligibility requires that applicants are considered low-income, as defined by the federal poverty line. They must be pregnant or have dependent children, 18 years old or younger and they must participate in approved vocational or skills training programs. In Illinois, applicants may be pregnant or have children under the age of 18, or 19 if the child is attending high school full-time, must be a resident of Illinois, may be a U.S. citizen or a qualified non-citizen or immigrant. This study by the National Center for Children in Poverty found that the average monthly TANF payment to a family of three in 2024 was approximately $552. Illinois had the 15^th highest average payment of the fifty states, providing an approximately $725 per month to approved families. 

TANF funding is granted to United States and territories by the federal government and states are entrusted with the task of creating programs to provide aid to families in need. Use of funding is regulated and states must adhere to certain federal standards, such as creating and implementing employment programs and retaining participant quotas. States are required to spend approximately 75 to 80 percent of their 1994 spending in AFDC programs. They must provide narrative TANF spending reports to the Department of Health and Human Services. The United States Government Accountability Office, “GAO”, found, in 2024, that seven states had incomplete narratives or were missing entirely for 2022 (GAO-25-107235, 2025). 

While states must meet certain federal guidelines and provide reports on spending, they are entitled to flexibility in their compulsory application of TANF grants. The GAO reviewed TANF spending in response to a lack of detailed reporting on how states utilized it. In some cases, this lack of detailed reporting has been exploited, such as in the case of the diversion of $90 million dollars of TANF grant funding between 2016 and 2019. The state of Mississippi sued over forty individuals, including Brett Favre, in response to a range of misuses of TANF funds. Favre’s involvement, for example, included $1.1 million of TANF funds diverted to pay appearance fees to Favre for events he never attended and $5 million to building brand new volleyball courts on the campus of Favre’s and his daughter’s alma mater, the University of Southern Mississippi. 

TANF benefits can be useful to families who would be without critical financial support and successful vocational training and job acquisition programs can provide lasting improvements to quality of life. Every state receives TANF funding and has to provide access to resources and support for families in need to receive block grants. Combined with other programs, such as SNAP, TANF benefits are helpful, but they rarely provide sufficient resources and opportunities alone to sustain families in need. Recent revelations of misappropriation of TANF grants and declines in the value of some state’s TANF-funded employment programs have fueled criticism and calls for reform of the program. Some cite the regulations and eligibility requirements for recipient participation to reduce the overall benefit of the program as well. Efficacy of TANF programs seems to vary by state, so individuals may benefit more or less depending on the state in which they reside. 

The fact that by law the TANF block grants given to states have not increased since 1996, and thus have diminished significantly when adjusted for inflation, is evidence that the Congress (even when the Democratic Party held the White House and both houses of Congress, as has been the case for four of the 29 years since TANF replaced AFDC) is not interested in providing cash benefits to low-income families with children. The preference seems to be that we should provide in-kind benefits through SNAP (which has increased significantly recently), Housing Choice Vouchers, and Medicaid. If there are cash benefits, they should be bestowed by the IRS through the EITC or the Child Tax Credit. 

I have never found an estimate, but I would like to see one, of how many children are neglected because their single parents must go out and work in order to collect their TANF benefits, and they do not have adequate placements where their children could be supervised when they come home from school or enjoy a day off of school while their parents are at work. 

I am not so entirely opposed to the idea in TANF that low-income single parents ought to be getting trained and prepared for work, or ought to be doing some work. But I would prioritize their ability to fill their roles as mothers or fathers, and make their responsibility to become self-sufficient or financially independent a secondary goal—an important goal—but not as important as parenting.

SOURCES AND RESEARCH LINKS

Congress Creates TANF 

Explaining Block Grants - Investopedia 

2022 PovertyAction.org - TANF Fact Sheet PDF 

What is TANF?

About TANF 2024

Office of Family Assistance - Links Page

TANF Programs by State

TANF Data and Reports

Laws and Regulations

Policy Guidance

   Training and Technical Assistance

TANF Reporting Instructions

IL TANF - IDHS TANF Page 

Declining Cash Assistance 1993 to 2016 

Center on Policy Budget Priorities - Policy Basics: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families

Increases in TANF Benefit Critical to Families  

TANF Cost Recovery In Child Support Program

How States Spend TANF Funds 

States Should Invest TANF Dollars in Basic Assistance

TANF Helps Families - But Not As Much As Claimed 

Ways and Means HRG on TANF