Report to Congressional Requesters

United States Government Accountability Office

GAO

September 2004 WELFARE REFORM

Rural TANF Programs 

Have Developed Many 

Strategies to Address 

Rural Challenges 

GAO-04-921 
www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-921.

To view the full product, including the scope 

and methodology, click on the link above. 

For more information, contact Cynthia M. 

Fagnoni, (202) 512-7215, or 

fagnonic@gao.gov. 

Highlights of GAO-04-921, a report to 

congressional requesters 

September 2004

WELFARE REFORM

Rural TANF Programs Have Developed 

Many Strategies to Address Rural 

Challenges 

According to our analysis of 48 states, about 293,000 families living in rural 

counties received TANF cash assistance during an average month in 

2003. Rural TANF families are about 14 percent of all TANF families, but the 

rural portion of individual states’ TANF caseload ranges from 0.02 percent to 

77 percent. Rural TANF families are concentrated in counties with 

disadvantaged conditions, including high unemployment and low median 

income. Since 1997, when welfare reform was implemented nationally, rural 

and urban TANF caseloads have declined by about the same amount— 

44 percent—when all reporting states’ counties are aggregated. 

The rural TANF caseworkers and service providers at sites we visited 

reported that transportation difficulties, job shortages, low wages, and lack 

of services, especially child care, challenged their efforts to help clients 

become employed and move toward self-sufficiency. However, they also 

cited strengths, including collaboration and personal attention to clients. 

To address the challenges they face, the rural TANF programs we visited 

have employed a variety of strategies including nontraditional methods of 

connecting clients with services and cooperative arrangements that leverage 

resources. Some of the strategies adopted by rural TANF agencies take a 

more targeted approach, working to overcome one particular challenge or 

set of challenges that clients face, especially in the areas of transportation, 

employment, and child care. 

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children 

and Families has undertaken several efforts that could assist TANF 

programs and recipients in rural areas. These include rural conferences, a 

demonstration project, technical assistance to rural programs, and a rural 

task force with representatives from different programs, including TANF. 

Plans are under way for an Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) initiative 

targeting rural TANF recipients. 

Rural and Urban TANF Caseload Changes between 1997 and 2003 

Calendar year

Percent

Source: GAO analysis of data provided by 37 states on the average number of families receiving cash assistance under

state TANF programs in each of the states’ counties during months of 1997 through 2003.

0

40

60

80

100

Urban caseload Rural caseload

1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

About 49 million people, or 17 

percent of the country’s total 

population, live in rural 

communities, and 18 states have at 

least a third of their population in 

rural areas. Rural areas often have 

less favorable employment 

conditions than urban areas and 

have fewer public transportation 

options to help people get to and 

from work. Given these conditions 

and the Temporary Assistance for 

Needy Families (TANF) program’s 

emphasis on moving recipients into 

jobs and on the path toward selfsufficiency, some have questioned 

how welfare reform is working in 

rural areas. To inform discussions 

of these concerns, GAO is reporting 

on (1) the size and distribution of 

the rural TANF caseload and how 

the caseload’s size has changed 

over time, (2) the challenges and 

strengths that rural TANF 

programs have in implementing 

welfare reform, (3) the strategies 

being used to address these 

challenges, and (4) what the 

Department of Health and Human 

Services (HHS) is doing to help 

rural areas address these 

challenges. To obtain this 

information, we used multiple 

methodologies, including analysis 

of county-level caseload data, as 

well as site visits, a review of 

studies on welfare reform in rural 

areas, and numerous interviews 

with caseworkers, government 

officials and other experts. 
Page i GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

Letter 1

Results in Brief 2 

Background 4 

The Rural TANF Caseload Is About 14 Percent of the National 

Caseload, Is Concentrated in Economically Disadvantaged 

Counties, and Has Declined at About the Same Rate as the 

Urban Caseload 6 

Rural Areas Present TANF Clients with Shortages in Jobs and 

Services but Also Foster Program Collaboration and Personal 

Attention to Clients 13 

Rural TANF Programs Transport Services to Clients and Leverage 

Resources to Provide Mentoring, Transportation, Job, and Child 

Care Assistance 20 

HHS Has Several Initiatives That Could Benefit Rural TANF 

Programs 34 

Concluding Observations 37 

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation 38 

Appendix I Scope and Methodology of TANF Caseload Data 

Analysis 39 

Appendix II Comparisons of Demographic and Socioeconomic 

Characteristics of Counties with Different TANF 

Characteristics 42 

Appendix III TANF Caseload Data by State 44 

Appendix IV Comments from the Department of Health and 

Human Services 47 

Appendix V GAO Contacts and Staff Acknowledgments 50 

GAO Contacts 50 

Staff Acknowledgments 50 

Contents 
Page ii GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

Bibliography 51 

Related GAO Products 53 

Tables 

Table 1: Comparison of Characteristics of Rural Counties with 

Different Proportions of Their Population on TANF 42 

Table 2: Comparison of Characteristics of Rural Counties with 

Different Degrees of TANF Caseload Change, 1997-2003 43 

Figures 

Figure 1: Percentage of TANF Families, in Each State, Living in 

Rural and Urban Counties 7 

Figure 2: Location of the Quarter of Rural Counties with the 

Highest Proportion of Families Receiving TANF 9 

Figure 3: Rural and Urban Caseload Changes between 1997 and 

2003 11 

Figure 4: Rural and Urban Caseload Changes by State, 1997-2003 12 

Figure 5: Customer Service Representative at Work Central’s Call 

Center in North Carolina Using Geographic Software 

Program During a Call to a Customer 22 

Figure 6: Mock Hotel Room for Housekeeping Training at 

Community College in Mississippi 31 
Page iii GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

Abbreviations

ABE adult basic education 

ACF Administration for Children and Families 

EITC Earned Income Tax Credit 

ERS Economic Research Service 

GED general equivalency diploma 

GOLD Golden Opportunities for Lifelong Development 

HHS Department of Health and Human Services 

MOE maintenance-of-effort 

OEI Occupational Enterprises, Inc. 

OFA Office of Family Assistance 

PREP People Realizing Employment Possibilities 

PRWORA Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity 

 Reconciliation Act of 1996 

TANF Temporary Assistance for Needy Families 

WIA Workforce Investment Act 

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Page 1 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

September 10, 2004 

The Honorable Charles E. Grassley 

Chairman 

The Honorable Max Baucus 

Ranking Minority Member 

Committee on Finance 

United States Senate 

The Honorable John D. Rockefeller, IV 

United States Senate 

About 49 million people—17 percent of the country’s total population—

live in rural America, and 18 states have at least one-third of their 

population in rural areas. In general, rural areas have less favorable 

employment conditions—fewer employers, fewer job options, and higher 

average unemployment rates—than urban areas. Also, rural areas usually 

do not have the type of public transportation often available in urban areas 

to help people get to and from work. Welfare reform, which was 

implemented nationally through the Temporary Assistance for Needy 

Families (TANF) block grant program, emphasizes the need for welfare 

recipients to gain employment and move toward self-sufficiency. Given the 

conditions in rural areas that could affect TANF recipients’ abilities to get 

a job and go to work, some have questioned how welfare reform is 

working in rural areas. 

Because of your interest in rural areas, you asked us to study welfare 

reform in these areas. This report presents information on (1) the size of 

the rural TANF caseload (that is, the number of families receiving monthly 

cash assistance), how that caseload is distributed, and how the caseload’s 

size has changed over time; (2) the challenges and strengths that rural 

TANF programs have in implementing welfare reform; (3) the strategies 

being used to address these challenges; and (4) what the Department of 

Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Administration for Children and 

Families (ACF) is doing to help rural areas address these challenges. 

To learn about the rural TANF caseload, we collected and analyzed 

county-level caseload data, which we determined were of an acceptable 

United States Government Accountability Office

Washington, DC 20548 
Page 2 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

reliability to use, from 48 states.1 Appendix I provides additional 

information on the scope and methodology of our TANF caseload data 

analysis. To learn about the challenges and strengths of rural TANF 

programs in implementing welfare reform and about the strategies being 

used to address these challenges, we visited TANF caseworkers or service 

providers in one or more rural counties in nine states: Arkansas, Kentucky, 

Minnesota, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, 

Virginia, and West Virginia. We selected locations to visit according to a 

combination of factors—their implementation of interesting strategies to 

address rural challenges for welfare reform, their high percentage of the 

population living in rural areas, and geographic diversity considerations. In 

three locations, we met with TANF clients to learn about the challenges 

they face in rural areas. We augmented our site visits with a review of 

studies on welfare reform in rural areas. We did not conduct site visits in 

urban areas and, therefore, do not address urban areas’ challenges, 

strengths, or strategies for implementing welfare reform. To learn what 

ACF is doing to help rural areas address challenges in implementing 

welfare reform, we interviewed ACF officials and reviewed documents 

they provided or that we obtained from their Web sites. We performed our 

work from June 2003 through July 2004 in accordance with generally 

accepted government auditing standards. 

About 293,000 families living in rural counties received cash assistance 

under TANF programs during an average month in 2003 in the combined 

48 states covered by our analysis. These families constitute about 

14 percent of all TANF families in the 48 states. However, in most of the 

states, much more than 14 percent of the state’s TANF families live in rural 

counties. For example, in South Dakota and Montana, 77 and 69 percent of 

the states’ TANF families live in rural counties, respectively. TANF 

families are not distributed evenly across rural counties but are 

concentrated in counties that, on average, have disadvantaged conditions 

including high unemployment and a large portion of the population 

without a high school diploma. For example, rural counties with a high 

concentration of TANF recipients had an average unemployment rate of 

7.8 in 2002 compared with 4.8 for counties with comparatively few TANF 

recipients. Since 1997, when welfare reform was implemented nationally, 

 1

The District of Columbia is included in this and subsequent counts of states in this report. 

Data from Arizona and Delaware are not included because we did not receive data from 

these states. Data from Wisconsin are not included because we did not receive reliable 

data from Wisconsin. 

Results in Brief 
Page 3 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

rural and urban TANF caseloads have declined by about the same 

amount—44 percent—when all reporting states’ counties are aggregated. 

Yet for a number of individual states, rural and urban caseloads have 

declined at different rates, most commonly with rural caseloads declining 

more than urban caseloads. 

The rural TANF caseworkers and service providers at sites we visited 

reported that transportation difficulties, job shortages, low wages, and 

lack of services, especially child care, challenged their efforts to help 

clients become employed and move toward self-sufficiency, although they 

also cited rural TANF program strengths of collaboration and personal 

attention to clients. The obstacles we identified during our site visits were 

also noted in several welfare reform studies. In some economically 

depressed areas, caseworkers believed their clients had a high prevalence 

of other problems such as very low education levels, domestic abuse, and 

medical conditions that the clients believe make them unable to work. On 

the other hand, TANF caseworkers and service providers we spoke with 

said their TANF programs have strengths that help them address the 

challenges posed in rural areas. First, they said they have used their 

connections in the community to develop collaborations with other social 

service providers, employers, and community institutions to help clients 

overcome problems and find jobs. Some rural TANF caseworkers also told 

us they were able to give their clients a lot of personal attention and their 

knowledge of the clients helped them address clients’ problems. 

To address the challenges they face, the rural TANF programs we visited 

have employed a variety of strategies including nontraditional methods of 

connecting clients with services, cooperative arrangements that leverage 

resources, and efforts to increase transportation, employment, and child 

care options. To make TANF services more accessible to clients in remote 

locations, a number of programs offered mobile or phone-based services, 

including a call center, a mobile technology lab, and in-home services. 

Further, some rural programs capitalized on community networks, 

entering into collaborative arrangements with others in the community to 

transcend resource constraints and maximize opportunities for TANF 

clients to find work and become self-sufficient. For instance, many of the 

officials we interviewed had established close working relationships with 

other social service providers in their communities, as well as educators, 

private employers, banks, and individual members of the community. The 

rural TANF programs we visited confronted transportation barriers by 

supporting private vehicle ownership initiatives, sponsoring bus and van 

services, and hosting driver’s education classes for individuals who have 

never been licensed to drive. Some of the strategies being used to help 
Page 4 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

clients find employment include providing wage subsidies and establishing 

workspaces in local manufacturing plants where clients can perform 

unpaid work while getting on-the-job training. Other employment 

strategies include providing specialized or skill-specific training programs 

and conducting comprehensive assessments of all new clients to 

determine the steps needed to help them become employed and move 

toward self-sufficiency. To increase child care quality and capacity in rural 

communities, some of the officials we interviewed had implemented 

initiatives to help or motivate existing in-home child care providers to 

become licensed or to encourage potential providers to enter the market. 

HHS’s Administration for Children and Families has planned and 

undertaken several initiatives that could assist TANF programs and TANF 

families in rural areas. Past efforts include several rural conferences 

where issues concerning rural TANF programs were discussed. In 

addition, the agency initiated a 7-year demonstration project to evaluate 

the effectiveness of rural welfare-to-work strategies, results from which 

are expected in 2007. Future efforts that might benefit rural TANF 

programs include an initiative designed to increase the number of TANF 

families residing in the Mississippi Delta region who claim the Earned 

Income Tax Credit.2

 Moreover, ACF has established a rural task force that 

is working to address rural concerns by sharing strategies currently being 

used by different programs, including TANF. Among the strategies the task 

force has focused on is the use of an e-mail Listserv to facilitate the 

distribution of information between ACF and rural service providers. We 

provided a draft of this report to HHS for its review. In its response, HHS 

said the draft was informative and did not disagree with any of the 

findings. 

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 

1996 (PRWORA) established the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families 

program, often referred to as welfare reform because it fundamentally 

changed welfare policies. TANF has a goal of promoting work and helping 

welfare recipients move toward self-sufficiency. It also established work 

requirements for welfare recipients and set a limit of 60 months on the 

amount of time recipients can receive cash assistance. 

 2

The Earned Income Tax Credit is a refundable federal income tax credit for low-income 

working individuals and families. The credit reduces the amount of federal tax owed and 

can result in a refund check. 

Background 
Page 5 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

Under TANF, states receive a family assistance block grant from the 

federal government that they can use to provide monthly cash assistance 

payments to families as well as to finance services for TANF clients or 

other low-income people to support their efforts to work. States can also 

combine their TANF funds with state funds and those from other federal 

programs that finance services such as child care, transportation, and 

training. States have flexibility to set their TANF policies, such as to define 

the specific activities that count toward the TANF work requirements and 

to set the number of months—up to a maximum of 60—for the cash 

assistance time limit. Further, states have flexibility in how they 

administer TANF; they can set policies at the state level or they can allow 

counties to set their own policies. The U.S. Department of Health and 

Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families administers the 

TANF block grant program and monitors states’ performance, such as 

whether states meet the targets for the percentage of TANF recipients who 

meet the work requirements. States’ federal TANF funding can be reduced 

if they do not meet the federally set targets. 

Welfare caseloads declined dramatically in the years following welfare 

reform. Researchers have identified various factors that may have 

contributed to the caseload decline, such as welfare reform-related policy 

changes and economic growth, but there is no consensus about the extent 

to which the different factors contributed to the decline. Welfare caseload 

changes are only one element to consider in assessing how well welfare 

reform is working. Some of the other information that is needed for such 

an assessment includes what happened to families who left welfare, 

whether former welfare recipients are working and moving toward selfsufficiency, and whether those who continue to rely on welfare, including 

hard-to-serve clients, are getting the services they need to help them leave 

welfare. 

Rural areas of the nation are diverse. The economic conditions, the 

characteristics of the population, and the geography differ from one rural 

area to another. For example, a rural area can be a retirement location on 

a coast, a coal-mining community in the mountains, or an agricultural 

community on a plain. A common characteristic of rural areas is relatively 

low population density. There are numerous definitions of what is meant 

by “rural.” The one used in this report was developed by the Office of 

Management and Budget and is based on a classification of counties as 

either metropolitan or nonmetropolitan. Metropolitan counties include 

both central counties with a large urbanized area and outlying counties 

that are economically tied to the central counties and display a level of 

“metropolitan character” based on population density, urbanization, and 
Page 6 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

population growth. Counties that do not qualify as metropolitan are 

classified as nonmetropolitan. We refer to the metropolitan counties as 

“urban” and the nonmetropolitan counties as “rural.” Of the 3,141 counties 

in the United States, 2,052 are classified as rural. 

Rural TANF families constitute about 14 percent of the total TANF 

monthly caseload for the 48 states covered by our study combined. 

However, when states are looked at individually, the rural portion of the 

TANF caseload ranges from 0.02 percent to 77 percent. Rural TANF 

families are not distributed evenly across rural America but are 

concentrated in counties that tend to have poor economic conditions. 

Finally, following national implementation of welfare reform, rural 

counties, as a group, had caseload declines similar to those experienced 

by urban counties. Yet in some states, there were substantial differences 

between rural and urban counties’ caseload changes. 

In 2003, during an average month, about 293,000 families living in rural 

counties received cash assistance under TANF programs of the combined 

48 states included in our analysis.3

 (Three of the 48 states—the District of 

Columbia, New Jersey, and Rhode Island—do not have any rural counties 

and therefore do not have any TANF families living in rural counties.) The 

293,000 families composed about 14 percent of the total number of TANF 

families in the 48 states. About 18 percent of families in the general 

population live in rural counties in the 48 states; therefore, TANF families 

are slightly less concentrated in rural counties in these combined states 

than is the general population. This is also indicated by the fact that 

2.4 percent of all rural families received TANF cash assistance in the 

48 states in 2003, compared with 3.1 percent of urban families. 

 3

Our analysis is based on an average of the monthly count of families who received cash 

assistance. Included in the count were families who received cash assistance paid for with 

federal TANF funds, as well as families who received cash assistance paid for with state 

maintenance-of-effort dollars required by the TANF block grant. In this report, we refer to 

all these families as TANF families. 

The Rural TANF 

Caseload Is About 14 

Percent of the 

National Caseload, Is 

Concentrated in 

Economically 

Disadvantaged 

Counties, and Has 

Declined at About the 

Same Rate as the 

Urban Caseload 

TANF Families Living in 

Rural Counties Are About 

14 Percent of the National 

Caseload but Form a 

Larger Percentage in Most 

Individual States 
Page 7 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

Looking at states individually, the percentage of TANF families living in 

rural counties ranged from 0.02 percent in Massachusetts to 77 percent in 

South Dakota. The median for the 48 states was 26.6 percent. The rural 

TANF percentage for all 48 states combined—14 percent—is much lower 

than the median because several highly populated states with large TANF 

populations, most notably California and New York, have a very low 

percentage of TANF families living in rural counties. Figure 1 shows, for 

each state, the percentage of the state’s TANF families who live in rural 

counties as well as the percentage who live in urban counties. 

Figure 1: Percentage of TANF Families, in Each State, Living in Rural and Urban Counties 

Note: The District of Columbia, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, which have no rural counties, are not 

included in the figure. 

When we compared, for each state, the percentage of the TANF families 

living in rural counties with the percentage of all families living in rural 

counties, we found that for most states, the two were very similar. 

0

20

40

60

80

100

Urban caseload

Rural caseload

South Dakota

Montana

North Dakota

Mississippi

Vermont

Wyoming

West Virginia

Kentucky

Maine

Arkansas

Iowa

New Hampshire

Kansas

South Carolina

New M

Idaho

exico

North Carolina

Hawaii

Nebraska

Oklahoma

Alaska

Alabama

Louisiana

Missouri

Oregon

Georgia

Minnesota

Virginia

Tennessee

Colorado

Texas

Indiana

Washington

O

Utah

hio

Michigan

Pennsylvania

N

Illinois

evada

Florida

Connecticut

New York

Maryland

California

Massachusetts

Source: GAO analysis of data provided by 45 states with rural counties on the average number of families receiving cash assistance

under state TANF programs during months of 2003.

Percent

States
Page 8 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

However, there were several exceptions. For example, South Dakota has a 

higher proportion of rural TANF families than would be expected 

(77 percent of TANF families live in rural counties, compared with 

58 percent of all families), and Nebraska has a lower proportion than 

would be expected (32 percent of TANF families live in rural counties, 

compared with 46 percent of all families). See appendix III for more 

information on individual states and their rural TANF caseload 

characteristics. 

The distribution of TANF families is uneven across rural counties, with 

some rural counties having very low numbers of TANF families and others 

having high numbers relative to all the counties’ families. We found that 

about 150,000 (51 percent) of the about 293,000 TANF families living in 

rural counties live in only a quarter of the rural counties in the 48 states 

covered by our study. These counties have on average about 4.7 percent of 

all their families receiving TANF. On the other hand, the quarter of rural 

counties with the lowest proportion of TANF families have a total of only 

about 14,000 (4.9 percent) TANF families and, on average, only about 

0.6 percent of all their families on TANF. 

To determine how counties with different proportions of their families on 

TANF compared, we looked at demographic and socioeconomic indicators 

for the counties. We grouped rural counties according to the proportion of 

all their families on TANF and compared the counties with a high 

proportion of families receiving TANF to those with a low proportion. We 

found significantly worse socioeconomic conditions in the counties with a 

high proportion of all families receiving TANF. For example, counties with 

a high proportion of all families receiving TANF had, on average, 

significantly higher unemployment, lower median incomes, and 

proportionately more people without high school diplomas. See appendix 

II for more specific information about how different groups of counties 

compared. Figure 2 shows the location of the rural counties with the 

highest proportion of families on TANF. 

Rural TANF Families Are 

Concentrated in Relatively 

Few Counties That Tend to 

Have Poor Economic 

Conditions 
Page 9 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

Figure 2: Location of the Quarter of Rural Counties with the Highest Proportion of Families Receiving TANF 

Rural counties with the highest proportion of families receiving TANF

All other rural counties

Urban counties

States not included in analysis

Source: GAO analysis of 2000 Census data and data provided by 45 states with rural counties on the average number of families

receiving cash assistance under state TANF programs during months of 2003.
Page 10 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

Rural and urban counties experienced about the same amount of caseload 

decline between 1997 and 2003. Specifically, the number of families, on 

average per month, receiving TANF cash assistance in rural counties in the 

40 states covered by our analysis4

 decreased by 43.9 percent, and urban 

counties had a 44.1 percent caseload decrease.5

 However, as shown in 

figure 3, rural TANF caseloads declined somewhat more than urban 

caseloads from 1997 to 2001. 

 4

This analysis includes all states that provided reliable caseload data for the years 1997 and 

2003. See appendix I for a list of those states. 

5

The number of all families living in rural counties grew at a lower rate from1990 to 2000 

than it did for urban counties. Because of this, without other offsetting factors, greater 

TANF caseload decline in rural counties than in urban counties might have been expected 

between 1997 and 2003. Specifically, for the 40 states included in our caseload change 

analysis, the percentage increase in all families was 6.0 in rural counties and 9.9 in urban 

counties from 1990 to 2000, according to decennial census data. 

Nationally, Rural and 

Urban TANF Caseloads 

Have Declined Similarly, 

with Some Distinct 

Exceptions in Some States 
Page 11 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

Figure 3: Rural and Urban Caseload Changes between 1997 and 2003 

Note: The figure is based on data from states that provided reliable caseload data for all years 1997 

through 2003. See appendix I for a list of these states. 

The rural and urban caseloads in many states declined by about the same 

percentage over the 1997-2003 period. However, for other states, there 

were substantial differences between the percentage of caseload decline 

in rural areas and that in urban areas, as shown in figure 4. 

Calendar year

Percent

Source: GAO analysis of data provided by 37 states on the average number of families receiving cash assistance under

state TANF programs in each of the states’ counties during months of 1997 through 2003.

0

20

40

60

80

100

Rural caseload

Urban caseload

1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
Page 12 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

Figure 4: Rural and Urban Caseload Changes by State, 1997-2003 

Note: Although Indiana, Nevada, and Tennessee show caseload increases for the period 1997-2003, 

their caseloads decreased in the earlier years and then began increasing around 2000 or 2001. The 

District of Columbia, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, which have no rural counties, are not included in 

the figure. 

-100 -80 -60 -40 -20 0 20 40

Rural caseload change

Urban caseload change

Wyoming

Illinois

North Carolina

Florida

Oklahoma

Louisiana

Ohio

Kentucky

West Virginia

New York

Michigan

Utah

Maryland

Hawaii

Mississippi

Georgia

California

South Dakota

Vermont

Texas

Oregon

Idaho

South Carolina

Washington

Colorado

Montana

Maine

Iowa

Virginia

Nebraska

Missouri

Nevada

North Dakota

New Hampshire

Kansas

Tennessee

Indiana

Source: GAO analysis of data provided by 37 states on the average number of families receiving cash assistance under

state TANF programs in each of the states’ rural and urban counties during months of 1997 and 2003.

Percentage change

States
Page 13 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

To determine how counties with different levels of caseload size changes 

compare, we looked at socioeconomic indicators for the counties. 

Although it might be expected that counties with the greatest declines in 

caseload would have the most favorable socioeconomic conditions, we did 

not find that. We found that counties with the least caseload decreases 

had, on average, somewhat more favorable socioeconomic conditions, 

such as lower unemployment rates, higher median incomes, and 

proportionately fewer people without high school diplomas than counties 

with the greatest caseload decreases. Also, counties with the lowest 

caseload decreases had, on average, greater increases in unemployment 

rates and greater population growth than counties with higher caseload 

decreases. See appendix II for more specific information about how 

counties with different amounts of caseload change compared. 

Several studies and our own site visits indicate that transportation 

shortages, fewer jobs, low wages, and a scarcity of ancillary services are 

common challenges to welfare reform in rural areas. In some economically 

depressed areas, other problems, such as very low education levels, are 

additional challenges to welfare reform. On the other hand, rural areas 

have strengths in implementing welfare reform in that they foster 

collaboration and personal attention to clients. 

During our site visits, we found that for some TANF clients, transportation 

may be the primary obstacle to becoming or remaining employed. For 

example, a caseworker in Logan County, West Virginia, said that it is not 

uncommon for clients to say that if they had transportation, they would 

not need to be on TANF. She also said she had several clients for whom 

she could find jobs immediately if they had transportation to get there. 

Transportation is a fundamental challenge for rural TANF recipients. Many 

cannot afford to own and operate a reliable private vehicle, and public 

transportation to get to and from training, services, and work is often not 

available. A 2001 Urban Institute study looking at welfare reform in 

Rural Areas Present 

TANF Clients with 

Shortages in Jobs and 

Services but Also 

Foster Program 

Collaboration and 

Personal Attention to 

Clients 

Lack of Transportation 

Limits Access to Jobs and 

Services 
Page 14 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

12 rural locations in four states, for example, found that public 

transportation was seldom available.6

 Caseworkers and service providers 

in some counties that we visited said that their counties have very limited 

bus service, such as a bus that operates in the main town but not outside 

it. Also, these buses generally had limited schedules and were not 

available at night. Others said there were no bus systems with set routes 

although vans were available to give people rides. For example, in Harnett 

County, North Carolina, a caseworker said that the local transportation 

agency was very cooperative in arranging pickups for clients but that the 

service was expensive. In Duplin County, North Carolina, a caseworker 

said that clients could call a van service for rides, but the appointment has 

to be set up several days in advance. In Coahoma County, Mississippi, we 

heard that the bus route spans a 50-mile radius, and those who choose to 

use it may have to allot two or three hours to get to work. 

The lack of valid driver’s licenses was identified by several caseworkers 

and service providers as a problem for many clients. Clients may lack a 

driver’s license either because they had never had one or because the 

license was suspended or revoked because of unpaid fines, no insurance, 

or driving under the influence of alcohol. Some caseworkers said that 

suspended driver’s licenses could be an insurmountable problem because 

of the high fees for reinstating them. The Court Clerk in Memphis, 

Tennessee, who performed a review of unpaid traffic fines, said that the 

average amount owed by people in Memphis with a suspended driver’s 

license was $1,500 to $2,000. 

Rural areas are reported to have average earnings levels 25 to 30 percent 

lower than those in urban areas,7

 and their unemployment rates are higher, 

on average, than those of urban areas. Rural areas also have less variety in 

the types of jobs available.8

 In our site visits, we found a consensus among 

rural TANF caseworkers that a shortage of jobs and the low wages paid by 

 6

Nancy M. Pindus. Implementing Welfare Reform in Rural Communities. Economic 

Research Service (Urban Institute) Feb. 2001. 

7

It might be argued that some of the earnings gap is offset by differences in the cost of 

living in urban and rural areas. On average, housing costs are lower in rural areas than in 

urban areas. However, little is known about how other personal costs differ, such as 

transportation, utility, grocery, and clothing costs, between rural and urban areas. 

8

Robert M. Gibbs. “Rural Labor Markets in an Era of Welfare Reform.” In Rural 

Dimensions of Welfare Reform, edited by Bruce A. Weber, Greg J. Duncan, and Leslie A. 

Whitener, 51-75. Kalamazoo, Michigan: W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 

2002. 

Few Available Jobs and 

Low Wages Hinder 

Movement toward SelfSufficiency 
Page 15 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

available jobs pose a challenge to their efforts to help clients meet TANF 

work participation requirements and find employment that will help them 

become self-sufficient. A study of welfare reform in selected persistently 

poor rural areas in four states found that in many of the counties studied, 

“there were simply very few jobs to be had.”9

Caseworkers and service providers we interviewed also reported that their 

clients tend to have little work experience and low education levels, 

making them less competitive in the job market. In several areas, 

caseworkers and service providers said that workers that had previously 

been employed but who had been laid off were more likely to be hired for 

the few jobs available than were TANF clients. Several caseworkers also 

said they had some clients who could not find employment in the county 

because they had “burned their bridges” with every employer in town. 

Others noted that having a bad experience with one employer in a rural 

community could earn someone a bad reputation with all prospective 

employers because information about people spreads easily. 

Studies looking at the earnings of current or former TANF clients have 

found low earnings in rural areas. The Urban Institute study of 12 rural 

locations in four states found that all locations reported that most jobs 

obtained by welfare recipients paid minimum wage and that few jobs 

offered opportunities for advancement.10 A study by Mathematica 

comparing earnings of current or former TANF clients in rural and urban 

areas in Nebraska found that earnings were much lower in rural areas than 

in urban areas.11 In addition, a 1999 study comparing selected urban and 

rural areas of Virginia found that the rural areas had a disproportionate 

number of women who were working but still lived below the poverty 

level.12

 9

Mark Harvey, Gene F. Summers, Kathleen Pickering, and Patricia Richards, “The Short 

Term Impacts of Welfare Reform in Persistently Poor Rural Areas.” In Rural Dimensions 

of Welfare Reform, edited by Bruce A. Weber, Greg J. Duncan, and Leslie A. Whitener, 

375-409. Kalamazoo Michigan: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2002. 

10Pindus. 

11Michael Ponza, Alicia Meckstroth, and Jennifer Faerber. Employment Experiences and 

Challenges among Urban and Rural Welfare Clients in Nebraska. Mathematica, August 

2002. 

12Sarah Bosley and Bradford Mills. How Welfare Reform Impacts Non-metropolitan and 

Metropolitan Counties in Virginia. Rural Development Program for Community Vitality, 

Virginia Tech, September 1999. 
Page 16 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

On the other hand, the welfare reform-related studies that have looked at 

employment in rural areas present a more positive picture. Of the two that 

used national samples to compare employment of single mothers in rural 

and urban areas,13 one found that single mothers in rural areas were just 

about as likely to be working as those in urban areas,14 and the other found 

that single mothers in rural areas were more likely to be working than 

those in urban areas.15 The above-mentioned Mathematica study found that 

TANF clients living in rural areas in Nebraska were more likely to be 

employed than those in Nebraska’s urban areas.16

“Lower population densities in rural areas make it more difficult to 

support some specialized services,” according to an analysis of research 

on welfare reform in rural areas that cited specialized education and job 

training, formal paid child care, and mental health services as being less 

available in rural areas.17 Caseworkers we met with also identified 

shortages in services as a problem that makes it difficult for TANF clients 

to address their barriers to working such as not having someone to care 

for their children, not meeting the basic education requirements for most 

jobs, having mental health issues that make keeping a job unlikely, and 

missing teeth or having other unattractive and unhealthy dental problems. 

In our site visits, caseworkers and service providers recounted different 

shortages in services from county to county, but they echoed much of the 

research literature: 

• Child care. A lack of child care centers, infant and toddler care, or 

child care on nights and weekends was a commonly cited shortage 

 13For both studies, the samples were taken from the Current Population Survey for a period 

in 1998 or 1999. 

14Robert I. Lerman, Signe-Mary McKernan, and Nancy Pindus. “Welfare Reforms and 

Employment of Single Mothers: Are Rural Areas Keeping Pace?” Rural America 16 (2001): 

22-27. 

15Daniel T. Lichter and Leif Jensen. “Poverty and Welfare among Rural Female-Headed 

Families.” Rural America 16 (2001): 28-35. 

16This study looked at employment status 1 year after the sample of TANF clients was 

drawn. Therefore, those included in the study could have already left TANF. 

17Greg Duncan, Leslie Whitener, and Bruce Weber. “Lessons Learned: Welfare Reform and 

Food Assistance in Rural America.” In Rural Dimensions of Welfare Reform, edited by 

Bruce A. Weber, Greg J. Duncan, and Leslie A. Whitener, 455-470. Kalamazoo, Michigan: 

W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2002. 

Shortages in Child Care 

and Other Services Create 

Difficulties in Addressing 

Clients’ Employment 

Barriers 
Page 17 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

identified in rural areas we visited. However, in two counties, we heard 

that there was a sufficient number of child care centers. A study that 

looked at welfare reform in selected persistently poor counties in four 

states found that finding reliable child care was a major barrier to 

employment for welfare recipients, that most recipients relied 

primarily on family and friends for child care, and that this type of child 

care was not always reliable.18 Case studies of seven communities in 

Iowa found that “many low-income rural residents experience 

continuing problems in securing adequate and affordable care for their 

children,” that “child-care centers are a rarity in rural communities,” 

and that “most recipients rely on home day care providers or relatives 

to care for their children.”19

• Education services. Few options for adult basic education (ABE) and 

general equivalency diploma (GED) classes was identified as a problem 

in some areas. For example, in Dickenson, Virginia, the only adult basic 

education class meets one evening a week, and GED classes geared 

toward people with learning disabilities are not available. However, 

caseworkers in counties with community colleges often said that there 

was adequate availability of GED classes. 

• Mental health services. In some areas, we heard there were long 

waits for mental health services and drug treatment programs were not 

available. 

• Dentists. In some counties, service providers and TANF clients 

identified the lack of dentists who accept Medicaid as a severe 

problem. 

In some of the more economically depressed areas that we visited, 

caseworkers stressed that they often had a high prevalence of hard-toserve clients with severe problems. These problems include very low 

education levels, many clients claiming disabilities, and family and 

personal problems. 

 18Harvey and others. 

19Cynthia Needles Fletcher, Jan Flora, Barbara Gaddis, Mary Winter and, Jacquelyn Litt. 

“Small Towns and Welfare Reform: Iowa Case Studies of Families and Communities.” In 

Rural Dimensions of Welfare Reform, edited by Bruce A. Weber, Greg J. Duncan, and 

Leslie A. Whitener, 201-229. Kalamazoo, Michigan: W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment 

Research, 2002. 

Other Issues Hamper 

Employment Potential for 

Clients in Some 

Economically Depressed 

Areas 
Page 18 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

• Very low education levels. In several areas, caseworkers mentioned 

that they had illiterate clients and clients with only a grammar school 

education. Caseworkers in Harlan County, Kentucky, and southwestern 

Virginia said this problem was acute in their areas. These caseworkers 

linked low education levels to the fact that, in the past, an education 

was not needed for a man to get a well-paying job in the areas’ coal 

mines. Also, it was a commonly held view that women did not need an 

education to stay home and take care of the family. For almost all 

available jobs, people with very limited educations will be 

automatically disqualified, according to caseworkers and service 

providers we spoke with. Also, caseworkers said that they must require 

the clients to meet TANF work requirements, even if the clients cannot 

qualify for any available paying jobs with their current lack of 

education. Further, such clients need a GED to become employable, 

but attaining one can take years when the clients start off at the 

grammar school level. 

• Clients claiming disabilities. In two areas we visited—Harlan 

County, Kentucky, and southwestern Virginia—caseworkers said they 

have many clients who believe they are too disabled to work. The 

caseworkers said that while some of these clients might be able to 

qualify for disability payments from the Social Security Administration, 

others will not qualify and will remain on TANF. 

• Family and personal problems. A family background of welfare 

dependence, families who oppose women working outside the home, 

domestic violence, and substance abuse were identified as significant 

problems in some rural areas. In several areas, caseworkers and 

service providers mentioned that many of their clients come from 

families who were welfare-dependent and did not convey a work ethic 

to their children. In Harlan County, Kentucky, and southwestern 

Virginia, caseworkers and service providers said that some of their 

clients come from families who believe women belong in the home and 

who oppose the clients going to work. They also said that domestic 

violence is common among their clients.20 For example, caseworkers in 

southwestern Virginia said they had had clients who had been beaten 

by their husbands when they attempted to work outside the home to 

meet TANF work requirements. Caseworkers also mentioned 

 20For information on the prevalence of domestic violence among welfare recipients, see 

GAO, Domestic Violence: Prevalence and Implications for Employment Among Welfare 

Recipients, GAO/HEHS-99-12 (Washington, D.C.: November 24, 1998). 
Page 19 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

substance abuse as a common problem among clients in several areas 

we visited. 

Caseworkers and service providers cited strengths that their areas have in 

implementing welfare reform that they associate with the rural 

environment. 

• Collaboration. Caseworkers and service providers said that the 

limited resources available in rural areas force people to work together 

to solve problems. They also said they often have personal contacts 

with employers and other community resources that provide a 

foundation for trust and can lead to job placements and other 

strategies to help clients. Also, caseworkers and service providers from 

different programs and agencies often get to know each other and can 

call each other directly, without going through another bureaucratic 

level, to get help in solving a client’s problem. A report on the results of 

case studies in 12 rural counties in four states stated that the “positive 

attitude, resourcefulness, and resilience of the rural communities we 

visited are the most notable aspects of welfare reform implementation 

we observed.” This study also found “flexibility of local caseworkers 

and other service providers in making alliances.”21

• Staff attention and knowledge. Caseworkers in some rural areas 

expressed the view that they can give their clients more personal 

attention than their urban counterparts can offer because of a smaller 

caseload. However, caseworkers in other rural areas did not believe 

they had fewer clients than caseworkers in urban areas. Some 

caseworkers said they had considerable knowledge about their clients, 

which is helpful in addressing the clients’ problems. For example, one 

caseworker said she had insight into some of her clients’ lives because, 

at one time, their grandmothers and mothers had also been her clients. 

Authors of a study of welfare reform in Nebraska suggested that “rural 

case managers may be more successful at engaging their clients” in the 

TANF employment program because they found that rural clients were 

more likely than urban clients to participate in the program.22

 21Pindus. 

22Ponza and others. 

Rural TANF Programs 

Foster Collaboration and 

Personal Attention from 

Caseworkers 
Page 20 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

The rural TANF programs we visited have devised many ways to bring 

services to distant clients, and they have tended to leverage their 

resources by collaborating with one another and with community 

institutions, focusing effort as they did so on helping clients surmount 

rural shortages in transportation, child care, and jobs. 

The rural TANF programs we visited have bridged distances to TANF 

clients with a variety of approaches ranging from bringing instructors and 

equipment to them to using technology to enable clients to access services 

without leaving home. 

• Virtual social services. The Work Central Career Advancement 

Center in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, is a call center that equips 

social workers with telephones and sophisticated computer systems in 

an attempt to help former TANF clients and other low-income people 

achieve economic self-sufficiency. According to a state TANF official, 

the strategy has reduced the rate of return to TANF cash assistance in 

this area of the state—8 percent for Work Central’s customers 

compared with 15 percent for the state’s other former TANF clients. 

Work Central’s social workers, or customer service representatives, 

spend their days on the telephone with low-income people in 11 rural 

counties in eastern North Carolina providing specific information, such 

as job openings, or helping customers solve problems and develop 

plans for improving their economic situation. The representatives place 

regular follow-up calls to customers and will also connect them to 

service providers—staying on the phone if needed. The representatives 

use numerous computer tools, including an electronic case 

management system with information on past and current benefits 

received by the customers. Also, a geographic software program 

depicts the customer’s area and identifies nearby service providers, 

employers, and other area customers who might be incorporated into 

the customer’s support system, such as in carpooling or babysitting. 

The representatives also have Internet links to service providers that 

detail hours of operation and locations. 

• Itinerant courses and instructors. A few of the rural TANF offices 

we visited sponsor training programs with traveling instructors. That is, 

Rural TANF Programs 

Transport Services to 

Clients and Leverage 

Resources to Provide 

Mentoring, 

Transportation, Job, 

and Child Care 

Assistance 

Rural Programs Devised 

Modes of Service Delivery 

That Transcend Geography 
Page 21 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

courses may not be held in the same location year-round, but may be 

offered in more than one location over the course of the year to 

maximize clients’ opportunity to enroll. To accommodate clients 

throughout a large New Hampshire county, for example, a 3-week life 

skills course was held alternately in the north and south sections. 

Another New Hampshire TANF program offered GED courses in 

different areas around the county. 

• Workforce mobile lab. To give low-income residents access to 

computer training, a technical college in northeastern Arkansas 

outfitted a van with computers and transported it to various program 

sites throughout the county. A community development organization 

enlisted the van to conduct online self-guided training courses for 

participants. TANF clients were offered a pre-employment training 

curriculum, choosing from topics that included substantive GED 

preparation, skills assessments, and soft skills instruction. 

• Distance learning by videoconference. In New Mexico, community 

college courses have been available to TANF clients by 

videoconference at several area high schools. According to staff, 

telecommunication has made it possible for many of the program’s 

single mothers to take classes without having to drive 100 miles round 

trip from remote locations. 

• Bringing services into clients’ homes. Some programs we visited 

have sent counselors out to visit with clients in their homes, 

particularly when they do not have transportation. For example, the 

state of New Hampshire has contracted with a nonprofit organization 

to provide in-home counseling services for its hardest-to-serve TANF 

clients—individuals who demonstrate evidence of mental illness, 

substance abuse, or domestic violence. The home visits are conducted 

over a 90-day period on a flexible schedule that includes nonbusiness 

hours to accommodate family needs. 
Page 22 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

Figure 5: Customer Service Representative at Work Central’s Call Center in North 

Carolina Using Geographic Software Program During a Call to a Customer 

Partnerships and collaboration were a common practice for many of the 

rurally situated programs we studied. From state to state and agency to 

agency, caseworkers described collaborative arrangements between TANF 

offices and other government agencies, nonprofit service providers, 

educational institutions, private sector employers, and neighboring 

counties. These partnerships ranged from loose, ad hoc affiliations to, in 

one instance, a group of counties’ Departments of Social Services joining 

together to create a nonprofit entity to help TANF clients become 

employed. According to those we interviewed, the collaborations helped 

leverage local resources and spawned new strategies. 

• Other service providers. Many of the rural TANF officials we visited 

explained that they convene regular meetings with other social service 

providers in their local areas to share ideas as well as information 

about community and program developments. For instance, TANF 

officials from Nicollet County in south central Minnesota said their 

eligibility and employment counselors participate in both monthly and 

Rural TANF Programs 

Have Leveraged Their 

Resources through 

Collaboration and 

Partnerships 

Source: GAO.
Page 23 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

quarterly meetings where ABE staff, public health officials, child 

protective services, and the local housing authority are all represented. 

Caseworkers and service providers cited these gatherings as a key 

component in building rapport with one another, learning about what 

partner agencies are doing, and fostering collective brainstorming 

sessions for solving difficult problems. The call center (Work Central) 

in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, partnered with the state employment 

agency and, as a result, receives advance updated job listings, which 

allows Work Central’s customer service representatives to call their 

customers about suitable job openings the day before the listings are 

made available to the general public, according to Work Central 

administrators. 

• TANF programs in neighboring counties. In 1998, the Departments 

of Social Services in eight jurisdictions in southwest Virginia with high 

unemployment joined together to create a nonprofit organization to 

help TANF clients become employed. The organization, called 

Occupational Enterprises, Inc. (OEI), started with a $750,000 grant of 

welfare-to-work dollars from the state of Virginia and has since applied 

for and received numerous grants from governmental and private 

sources to finance its operations. OEI uses its grants to provide 

employment services for all TANF clients in the welfare reform 

program in the eight jurisdictions. By applying for grants on behalf of 

the combined population of all the participating rural counties, OEI 

can qualify for much larger funding amounts than it would if it were 

working with only one rural county. OEI managers believe that by 

covering many counties, they greatly reduce administrative expenses 

and can provide far more services than could be provided if each 

county were operating independently. This occurs because all locations 

benefit from the development of one program, and duplication of effort 

is avoided. Also, more staff people are available to collaboratively solve 

problems and support one another when needed. Further, instead of 

needing a staff person in each county who can provide a service or 

program, one or two staff can specialize and serve all locations. 

Recently, three additional jurisdictions have joined the original eight to 

be part of the OEI consortium. 

• Community colleges. Often, service providers named their local 

community college as yet another key partner in the network of service 

providers working to assist TANF clients in finding work and becoming 

self-sufficient. The counties we visited in Mississippi and New Mexico, 

for instance, had designated the local community college as the 

contract provider of TANF workforce training services. In fact, 

Mississippi’s governor was so pleased with the job placement rates of 
Page 24 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

local community colleges that he proposed giving the community 

college system oversight of Workforce Investment Act (WIA) programs 

statewide.23

• WIA collaboration. WIA and TANF programs in Logan County, West 

Virginia, worked together to establish driver’s education courses, using 

WIA funds, for welfare and workforce clients who had never obtained a 

license. New Hampshire officials took a similar approach, allocating a 

portion of their WIA funding to provide specialized computer training 

for TANF clients. 

• A local bank. The Work Central Advancement Center in Rocky Mount, 

North Carolina, partnered with a local bank to offer bank accounts to 

Work Central customers in an effort to save customers the exorbitant 

fees charged by independent check-cashing services. Unlike a typical 

checking account, these accounts provide debit cards only and require 

that sufficient funds be available in order for a withdrawal to be made, 

thus eliminating the possibility of bounced checks, which Work Central 

learned had been at the root of many customers’ problems with banks 

in the past. 

In addition to the partnerships described here, program officials also 

described other collaborative arrangements, namely partnerships centered 

on employment and transportation that are described in other sections of 

this report. 

A number of rural TANF programs have provided TANF clients with more 

informal support from their communities in the form of mentors drawn 

from work sites, church congregations, or the community at large. 

According to officials we spoke with, the mentors offer advice and serve 

as role models, particularly for clients with a family history of welfare who 

lack experience in the workplace. 

• Mentoring in New Mexico. Building on a state-level partnership 

between the New Mexico Aging and Long Term Care Department and 

the Department of Human Services, the state of New Mexico launched 

 23The Workforce Investment Act was passed in 1998 to consolidate services of many 

employment and training programs, mandating that states and localities use a centralized 

service delivery structure—the one-stop center system—to provide access to most 

federally funded employment and training assistance. 

Rural Programs Have 

Collaborated with Others 

to Provide Mentoring for 

TANF Clients 
Page 25 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

the Golden Opportunities for Lifelong Development (GOLD) Mentoring 

Program in 2000. Capitalizing on the state’s sizable population of 

retired residents, the GOLD Mentoring Program pairs retirees with 

TANF clients in the same community, in hopes that mentors will fill 

gaps in caseworker service delivery and develop a level of rapport with 

clients that is not always possible for caseworkers, given the 

competing demands on their time. Mentors coach clients in a variety of 

contexts, including family and interpersonal relationships, preemployment preparation and job search activities, as well as in clients’ 

interactions with other government entities. For example, mentors told 

us that it was not uncommon for mentors to accompany clients to 

court appearances or for mentors to intercede on behalf of clients 

trying to navigate various government benefit systems. 

• Mentoring in Forrest City, Arkansas. A community development 

corporation in Forrest City, Arkansas, operates a mentoring program 

for TANF clients that relies on unpaid volunteers from the community. 

Known as PREP, which stands for People Realizing Employment 

Possibilities, this program constitutes the support component of a local 

subsidized employment initiative. Specifically, the mentoring program 

was created to help TANF clients facilitate workplace problem solving 

and to provide a model of appropriate workplace norms and behaviors 

during subsidized job training arrangements with area employers. 

Mentors meet with clients about once a week to gauge progress and 

help resolve issues that have arisen. Although mentors do not 

necessarily work at the same location as their assigned clients, 

cognizant staff told us that mentors occasionally make workplace visits 

to clients’ work sites. 

• Employer-based mentoring in southern Minnesota. During the late 

1990s, staff from a 10-county region in the southeastern part of 

Minnesota partnered to develop an employer-based mentoring program 

intended to help TANF clients acclimate to new work environments 

and deal constructively with conflicts to avoid termination, and to help 

area employers improve retention. The program trained mentors in 

conflict avoidance and resolution strategies and paired them with new 

hires. Although the primary goal of the program was to provide support 

for TANF clients entering the workforce, the service was made 

available to all new employees hired by a participating employer. By 

targeting all new employees, the program avoided identifying or 

possibly stigmatizing TANF clients in the workplace and also provided 

more of an incentive for employers to participate. All told, the program 

trained approximately 1,200 mentors in 475 organizations, some of 

which experienced marked improvements in their retention rates 
Page 26 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

during that time. For example, one nursing home that employed a 

considerable number of TANF clients was concerned about its high 

staff attrition rates. After implementing the mentoring program, staff 

turnover at the nursing home dropped from 60 percent to 4 percent and 

eventually stabilized at about 20 percent, according to program staff.24 

The rural TANF programs that we visited had focused a substantial 

amount of their efforts on remedying at least one of three shortages they 

said prevented many TANF clients from finding or keeping employment—

transportation, job options, and child care. In each area, they had tailored 

services to meet particular needs and were grooming clients for the 

particular opportunities that existed in their local markets. Some 

placement programs sought to remedy skill deficiencies to make clients 

more marketable, while others targeted the area employers, developing 

industry-specific training modules, outreach initiatives, and economic 

incentives in hopes of parlaying those relationships into jobs for TANF 

clients. Research suggests that training programs designed to reflect the 

needs of the local labor market tend to result in positive outcomes for 

participating clients.25

Rural TANF programs had implemented a variety of initiatives, ranging 

from private vehicle programs to dedicated transport vans to helping 

individuals acquire or regain their driver’s licenses.26

• Donated car programs. A number of the rural program officials we 

spoke with advocated private vehicle ownership programs as the best 

solution to the transportation problems that affect many rural TANF 

clients. Specifically, supporters of private vehicle ownership contend 

that mass transit options can be insufficient and unreliable in rural 

areas and argue that to guarantee regular work attendance, clients 

must own their own cars. The Good News Garage, a nonprofit 

 24This program was funded initially by a private foundation grant, and program 

administrators also collected a fee from participating employers to underwrite operating 

costs. However, after grant funding was exhausted, and as a result of the concomitant 

economic downturn (which decreased the demand for new workers), the program was all 

but discontinued in 2003. 

25Rural Welfare to Work Strategies, Research Synthesis. Macro International Inc., June 10, 

1999. 

26For information about more transportation strategies in rural areas, see Pamela 

Friedman, Transportation Needs in Rural Communities. Rural Assistance Center, March 

2004. http://www.raconline.org/info_guides/transportation/issuenote.html 

Rural TANF Strategies 

Have Targeted Shortages 

in Transportation, Jobs, 

and Child Care 

Expanded Transportation 

Options 
Page 27 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

organization founded in Vermont but adapted in other parts of the 

country, has been a pioneer in this area, soliciting donated cars, 

evaluating and refurbishing them, and then placing them in the hands 

of TANF clients for a nominal fee. Because this program relies on 

donated, rather than purchased, cars, TANF clients in New Hampshire, 

for example, are only required to pay a fixed price of $1,100, which 

may be paid by TANF or another benefit program, to partially cover 

the cost of refurbishing. Other variations on the Good News Garage 

concept require participants to enter into a lease agreement, where the 

purchaser agrees to pay a fixed monthly fee over a set period, at the 

end of which clients in good standing are given the title to the car. 

Most of these programs provide some type of support to client 

participants in the form of car repair clinics, referrals to modestly 

priced garages, even subsidies for insurance or repairs. The program 

administrators we spoke with cited a number of positive outcomes 

associated with private vehicle ownership: In the case of Good News 

Garage, program officials asserted that 75 percent of the TANF 

recipients who received vehicles subsequently left the welfare rolls. 

Further, a study examining the impact of Vermont’s Good News 

Garage program on the earned income of participating TANF clients 

found that average incomes for participating clients rose $220 per 

month after they had been outfitted with a vehicle.27

• Car loan programs. Other car programs seek not only to provide 

clients with vehicles, but also to help them raise their credit ratings in 

the process. Specifically, some programs focus on helping clients 

obtain new cars or finance newer vehicles through low-cost loans with 

generous repayment terms. For instance, in New Hampshire, a program 

called Wheels-to-Work offers a tax credit to dealerships in return for 

donations of high-quality used cars that can then be sold to low-income 

families for about half the cars’ appraised value. Because the average 

cost to the client of these cars is around $3,300, requiring most clients 

to obtain loans, Wheels-to-Work also serves as a mediator between 

clients and lenders. In Minnesota, a consortium of counties in the south 

central portion of the state received funding to launch a similar car 

loan program for TANF clients. In this instance, the consortium used 

the funding not to purchase or repair cars, but to establish a loan 

guarantee fund that facilitated the development of relationships with 

two area banks on the condition that the car program would guarantee 

 27Marilyn T. Lucas and Charles F. Nicholson. “Subsidized Vehicle Acquisition and Earned 

Income in the Transition from Welfare to Work.” Transportation 30 (2003): 483-501. 
Page 28 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

25 percent of any defaulted loan. In addition to mediating between the 

bank and the loan applicant, staff affiliated with the car loan program 

also counseled applicants on consumer credit issues, provided 

insurance referrals, and established relationships with area car dealers. 

Although staff operated as mediators between the client and the lender, 

the program required clients to choose a preferred lender and act as 

the primary point of contact. By requiring clients to take loans and 

interact with the bank holding the loan, the program sought to improve 

clients’ credit ratings, financial literacy, and confidence in dealing with 

financial institutions. According to officials overseeing the program, 

less than 30 percent of participating car owners defaulted on their 

loans. 

• Van, bus, and other dedicated transportation systems. Instead of 

allocating resources for private vehicle ownership programs, some of 

the rural TANF programs we visited elected to subsidize clients’ use of 

existing transportation systems, sponsor their own van transport 

service, or create reciprocal agreements with other social service 

programs already providing transportation (e.g., Head Start).28 For 

example, Logan County, West Virginia, and Coahoma County, 

Mississippi, provide vouchers for clients to use the local fixed route 

bus system. Other localities have chosen to sponsor their own van 

services, but the distances separating relatively small numbers of 

clients drives up the cost of van services. For instance, according to 

one official in St. Francis County, Arkansas, the price of these services 

in his area was as high as $2,000 per client per month. One West 

Virginia county suffering from limited public transportation partnered 

with the local Head Start program to secure the use of its van for TANF 

client transport when Head Start was not in session.29

• Obtaining or reinstating driver’s licenses. To address the issue of 

clients who had never been licensed to drive, the local TANF program 

in Logan County, West Virginia, partnered with Workforce Investment 

 28Head Start is the largest federal program supporting early childhood development and 

offers a range of services to families in communities nationwide, including educational, 

medical, dental, mental health, nutritional, and social services. 

29To obtain more information on federal programs offering transportation services for lowincome families, see GAO, Transportation—Disadvantaged Populations: Some 

Coordination Efforts Among Programs Providing Transportation Services, but Obstacles 

Persist. GAO-03-697 (Washington, D.C.: June 2003) and GAO, Welfare Reform: Job Access 

Program Improves Local Service Coordination, but Evaluation Should be Completed. 

GAO-03-204 (Washington, D.C.: December 2002). 
Page 29 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

Board staff from the same locality to offer driver’s education courses to 

their respective service populations. To help TANF clients deal with 

large unpaid traffic tickets and avoid having their driver’s licenses 

suspended, program officials in Coahoma County, Mississippi, are 

exploring the possibility of working with local authorities to develop an 

incremental payment program for TANF clients. This initiative will be 

modeled after a program operated by the City Court Clerk’s Office in 

Memphis, Tennessee. Although the Memphis program does not 

specifically target the TANF population, the goal is the same: to 

provide residents in danger of facing license suspensions because of 

unpaid fines an opportunity to establish an arrangement allowing them 

to make incremental payments and pay down those fines over time. 

According to the program’s administrator, the incremental payment 

program has dramatically reduced the number of outstanding or 

inactive traffic fines and boosted the city’s traffic fine revenue from 

$4 million to approximately $14 million annually. 

Rural TANF programs we visited have developed a variety of approaches 

to find employment opportunities for TANF clients, to provide training 

that will make TANF clients more marketable to area employers, and to 

assess clients’ skills and barriers to employment. 

• Job development. In several counties we visited, one or more staff 

had been given the responsibility of developing and maintaining 

contacts with employers so that when the employers had job openings, 

they would give TANF clients the opportunity to fill the openings. Also, 

caseworkers in several counties said they sometimes set up subsidized 

employment arrangements for clients. That is, the welfare program 

would pay all or part of a client’s salary for a given period of time to 

encourage employers to give the clients a chance to learn the job and 

prove themselves good employees. Several caseworkers said that 

subsidized employment frequently turned into permanent 

(unsubsidized) jobs for clients. Also, caseworkers in some areas said 

they had set up unpaid job opportunities for clients to help them build 

work experience. In southwest Virginia, OEI established workspaces 

in two local manufacturing plants where their clients receive on-thejob training and perform unpaid work under the supervision of plant 

management. Under this arrangement, plant management agrees to 

forgive clients’ mistakes and absences. Also, clients who turn out to be 

successful workers get priority for hiring at the plants. OEI has also 

established a downtown ceramics shop and store for Appalachian 

crafts where TANF clients work, unpaid, to learn what is expected of 

Job Development, Job Training, 

and Tailored Employment 

Assessments 
Page 30 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

them in the workplace and to develop work experience that can help 

them obtain and retain paid employment. 

• Skill-based training. Some of the TANF programs we visited offered 

skill- or industry-specific training programs designed to help clients 

develop skills relevant to a particular local employer or industry. For 

example, administrators affiliated with the local community college in 

Coahoma County, Mississippi, formed a partnership with a large local 

casino-hotel complex, one of the few employers in the county with a 

need for low-skilled workers. Community college officials, working in 

conjunction with casino personnel, developed a curriculum to teach 

TANF clients relevant hospitality skills including housekeeping, valet, 

security, and cashier services. The casino also funded the construction 

of a mock hotel room in one of the classrooms at the college to give 

students an opportunity for firsthand experience in chemical safety and 

other housekeeping protocol. Instructors monitor students’ progress 

and refer job-ready participants to hiring personnel at the casino. 

According to staff at the community college, TANF clients feel that 

participants in the training program have a better chance of being hired 

by the casino than do those who submit an application independent of 

the program. Casino officials also said that the retention rate for those 

referrals tends to be considerably higher than the industry standard. 
Page 31 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

Figure 6: Mock Hotel Room for Housekeeping Training at Community College in 

Mississippi 

To encourage a local manufacturer to employ TANF clients, program 

officials in northern New Hampshire’s Coos County invited the 

employer to assist in designing a 10-week course for TANF clients that 

would impart the skills necessary for assembling prefabricated 

modular homes. When the corporate catalyst for the project began to 

experience financial difficulties and was forced to temporarily suspend 

hiring, program officials explained that some of the clients who 

participated in the training were hired by other employers who could 

capitalize on their new skills. A local TANF agency in Goodhue County, 

Minnesota, also emphasizes practical skills and helped the local 

community college develop a short-term welding course that covered 

the fundamentals and laid the groundwork for participants interested 

in pursuing certification. 

• Certified computer training courses. At least two of the states we 

visited also sponsored computer training for TANF clients culminating 

in industry-recognized certification. For instance, New Hampshire’s 

TANF program gives some clients the opportunity to enroll in an 

intensive 14-week computer training course designed and certified by 

Microsoft. Curriculum topics include word processing, spreadsheets, 

Source: GAO.
Page 32 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

and presentation software. Program officials in one New Hampshire 

county told us that among its first cohort of graduates from the 

computer training program, all but one had left TANF at the time of our 

interview. In Coahoma County, Mississippi, TANF recipients can 

participate in 4-week computer training certification courses consisting 

of instruction in the basic use of computer hardware, software, 

networks, and the Internet. 

• Microenterprise. In some of the New Mexico communities we visited, 

weak economies and job scarcity prompted program officials to pursue 

microenterprise ventures (also known as self-employment) as a viable 

alternative for TANF clients seeking work. Specifically, an 

Albuquerque-based nonprofit specializing in training and technical 

assistance for small business start-ups developed a training program 

specifically for TANF clients interested in starting their own 

businesses. Microenterprise staff provide TANF clients with consulting 

expertise as well as financial literacy training and other instruction in 

basic business principles. In addition, the group also maintains an 

online marketplace for clients to sell their products. The group has 

assisted TANF clients in launching a wide array of businesses, from 

arts and crafts to landscaping and child care. 

• Scheduling accommodations. In the state of West Virginia, TANF 

officials have structured a 6-week life skills and pre-employment 

training course for TANF clients such that each week constitutes a 

discrete module not dependent upon other modules to be 

understandable. This allows TANF clients to enroll at the beginning of 

any week, rather than having to wait several weeks for the course to 

begin again. In addition, the stand-alone format of West Virginia’s 

training makes it possible for clients to enroll and obtain credit for 

individual modules as their schedules allow. In Harnett County, North 

Carolina, enrollees in GED classes have the option of performing the 

preparation work in a classroom environment or of engaging in more 

individualized self-paced learning. 

• Comprehensive screening and assessment. OEI, a nonprofit 

organization that performs employment services for TANF clients from 

11 counties in southwest Virginia, developed an assessment tool and 

process for all new clients. The assessment, which is managed by a 

licensed clinical social worker and registered nurse, screens for a 

number of problems that the OEI staff believe are very common among 

clients in their area, such as learning disabilities, domestic violence, 

substance abuse, and physical and mental health problems. The 

assessment also evaluates clients’ educational attainment; legal, family, 
Page 33 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

and employment histories; transportation and child care needs; skills; 

and employment goals. The results of the assessment provide the 

foundation for decisions about appropriate activities for promoting 

individual employment and self-sufficiency as well as client aptitudes 

for various types of work. 

• Screening to assist clients claiming disabilities. Program officials 

in Harlan County, Kentucky, employ a “good cause” specialist, a 

dedicated caseworker responsible for visiting clients who claim either 

to have disabilities severe enough to prevent them from working or to 

have primary caregiver responsibility for a family member with a 

disability. The visits to clients’ homes are intended to give the 

caseworker an opportunity to assess clients’ living situations firsthand, 

learn more about the clients’ claimed disabilities, and identify any 

activities the clients are already doing that might be parlayed into 

countable work activities. For example, program officials in Harlan 

County noted that on a number of occasions, the good cause 

specialist’s visit to a client’s home uncovered existing child or elderly 

care arrangements with the potential to be expanded into small 

businesses that would not only count toward the work requirements 

but also could further clients’ self-sufficiency goals. Staff members 

related one anecdote where a TANF client had claimed a medical 

exemption as a result of responsibilities stemming from the care of her 

disabled mother, rather than a medical condition of her own. Staff 

members were able to arrange day care for the client’s mother, and the 

client was able to return to work. 

To produce a larger, more stable, better-trained corps of child care 

providers, child care administrators in some local communities have 

mounted child care initiatives to help meet community needs. 

• Building capacity among current child care providers. As part of a 

short-term pilot program in Harlan County, Kentucky, the local child 

care referral group partnered with Early Head Start staff to expand the 

number of openings for infants and toddler-age children.30 To 

accomplish that goal, a dedicated staff member developed lesson plans 

and a curriculum that provided a foundation for certification. In the 

state of Kentucky, certified providers are allowed to care for more 

children than uncertified providers and also qualify for larger per child 

 30In 1994, Congress established Early Head Start, a program that performs much the same 

function as its counterpart, Head Start, but serves a different demographic, namely, 

expectant mothers as well as infants and toddlers from birth to age three. 

Increased Child Care 
Page 34 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

state subsidy payments. Staff launched the program by visiting current 

providers in their homes to share certification information and deliver 

safety equipment such as cabinet latches, fire extinguishers, and safety 

gates. In addition, the initiative’s primary point person also hosted 

periodic discussion groups that were conducted at a central location. 

Although the pilot program was only funded for 1 year, program 

administrators told us that approximately 15 of the original 20 

participants maintain their certification, and an additional 2 have gone 

on to receive advanced certification allowing them to care for up to 

12 children in their homes. They credited the initiative for giving rise to 

Harlan County’s first child care slots open to infants and toddlers. In 

addition, one staff member mentioned that the training and subsequent 

increase in income shifted perceptions among participating child care 

providers, prompting them to view child care as a profession rather 

than as a temporary measure for generating additional household 

income. Program officials went on to say that in their experience, 

another benefit of increasing the number of home-based child care 

slots stemmed from the ability and willingness of in-home child care 

providers in their community to offer after-hours care, a service that 

center-based facilities had not succeeded in doing. 

• Recruiting new providers. In a remote St. Francis County, Arkansas 

community, human services staff coordinated with child care 

specialists from Little Rock to increase the availability of child care in 

the area. Staff utilized church networks and storefronts to heighten 

community awareness about the need for child care providers and 

followed up with an informational session for interested community 

members. After attending the informational session, potential providers 

were directed to enroll in licensing training. As a supplement to the 

licensing curriculum, staff spearheading the recruiting effort also 

partnered with the Small Business Administration’s local office to offer 

a voluntary 6-week business planning component. Ultimately, the 

outreach program yielded four or five new child care providers. 

HHS’s Administration for Children and Families has planned and 

undertaken several initiatives that could assist TANF programs and TANF 

families in rural areas. Several ACF offices with different responsibilities 

are involved in these initiatives. 

• Conferences addressing rural TANF issues. In September 2003, ACF 

and the Department of Labor jointly sponsored a 2-day rural conference 

for one of ACF’s 10 regional offices. The conference was designed to 

HHS Has Several 

Initiatives That Could 

Benefit Rural TANF 

Programs 
Page 35 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

improve service delivery to families in rural areas by offering rural service 

providers an opportunity to discuss strategies for addressing challenges. 

Collaboration with community partners was emphasized. Officials from 

9 counties across 5 states participated in the conference. ACF sponsored 

similar conferences in 1999 and 2000 that were geared toward sharing 

rural welfare-to-work strategies. Approximately 11 states and 4 regions 

were represented at each year’s conference. Topics covered at these 

conferences included transportation strategies, child care strategies, and 

economic and community development. 

• Demonstration projects. ACF’s Office of Planning, Research, and 

Evaluation is currently sponsoring a demonstration project to evaluate the 

effectiveness of welfare-to-work strategies being used in rural areas of 

Illinois and Nebraska. These two states are testing different approaches to 

addressing employment barriers common in rural places. For example, the 

Illinois Future Steps program offers intensive, employment-focused case 

management including job placement assistance and postemployment 

support assistance. Future Steps staff support and monitor clients’ 

progress closely through regular meetings and home visits. The second 

program, Building Nebraska Families, focuses on improving the basic life 

skills of hard-to-employ people so they can participate in job search and 

job training activities, as well as address personal and family barriers to 

self-sufficiency. Educational services are provided mainly through home 

visits and cover subjects such as household management, parenting, and 

decision making. A complete evaluation of the effectiveness of these 

interventions will be available in 2007.31

• Technical assistance to TANF programs. ACF’s Office of Family 

Assistance (OFA), which is responsible for administering the TANF block 

grant, provides technical assistance to TANF programs. One means 

through which technical assistance is provided is the Welfare Peer 

Technical Assistance Network. The purpose of the network, which was 

started in 2000, is to provide technical assistance and facilitate information 

exchanges among states, counties, and community-based organizations 

about promising practices and lessons learned in implementing welfare 

reform. The network provides technical assistance in response to specific 

requests from state or local TANF programs. If the technical assistance 

 31For a summary of the implementation experiences for the programs involved in the 

demonstration project, see Andrew Burwick, Vinita Jethwani, and Alicia Meckstroth. 

Implementing Welfare-to-Work Programs in Rural Places: Lessons from the Rural 

Welfare-to-Work Strategies Demonstration Evaluation. Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., 

April 2004. The report is available at http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/opre/. 
Page 36 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

involves a site visit or teleconference, usually only the programs that 

requested the assistance are included. However, other interested parties 

may be included. Summaries and results of these meetings or conference 

calls are posted on ACF’s Web site.32 Three of the nine technical assistance 

events that occurred during January through June of 2004 were focused on 

rural TANF programs. One such event was a teleconference among six 

states to discuss approaches to developing work experience sites in tribal 

and nontribal rural areas. 

• Promoting use of the Earned Income Tax Credit. ACF is also 

planning an expansion of an initiative designed to increase the number of 

low-income families in the Mississippi Delta region that claim the Earned 

Income Tax Credit (EITC).33 The follow-on strategy is expected to focus 

more on rural areas. While not yet implemented because of funding 

constraints, an expansion of the Delta EITC initiative would train 

volunteers from local universities and community colleges to prepare tax 

returns for rural low-income families and ensure that they apply for the 

EITC.34 The initiative would specifically target those families in the Delta 

region that have recently left TANF. To accomplish this, the agency plans 

to collaborate with the Internal Revenue Service, universities and 

community colleges, as well as private companies. 

• ACF’s Rural Initiative Task Force. As a part of HHS’s agencywide 

initiative to strengthen rural families and communities, ACF has 

established a rural task force to bring together ACF officials from across 

 32The Welfare Peer Technical Assistance Network Web site is located at 

http://peerta.acf.hhs.gov/. 

33The following states within the Mississippi Delta region will be the focus of ACF efforts to 

increase the number of families claiming the EITC: Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, 

Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee. 

34Some experts suggest that there may be higher financial incentives to work in rural areas 

than in urban areas. This is because average incomes are lower in rural than urban areas, 

and since the EITC and food stamps are the same throughout the country, families relying 

on earnings plus federal benefits achieve higher relative incomes in rural than in urban 

areas. See Robert Lerman, Amy-Ellen Duke, Jesse Valente. Do Income Support Levels and 

Work Incentives Differ between Rural and Urban Areas? Washington, D.C.: the Urban 

Institute,1999. 
Page 37 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

the different ACF programs, including TANF.35 Officials in both 

headquarters and regional offices participate in monthly meetings of the 

Rural Task Force and discuss rural concerns and share strategies. One 

activity the task force is undertaking is the development of a rural e-mail 

Listserv in order to improve communication between ACF and rural 

entities. The rural Listserv would provide a firm source of communication 

between ACF and rural partners and share information such as training 

opportunities, grant opportunities, technical assistance, and other issues 

of concern to rural areas. 

Rural counties shared in the nation’s dramatic declines in TANF caseloads 

that followed national implementation of welfare reform. However, these 

national caseload declines do not necessarily mean that welfare reform 

has been successful or that conditions are not challenging welfare reform 

in rural areas. First, changes in the number of all families are likely to 

affect the number of TANF families, and the number of all families in rural 

areas is growing at a lower rate than that of urban areas. Therefore, 

without other offsetting factors, rural areas’ TANF caseloads should be 

expected to decline more (or grow less), proportionately, than urban 

areas’ caseloads. Second, data on caseload declines do not reveal whether 

those who left the caseload are employed and moving toward selfsufficiency, which are essential pieces of information for assessing the 

success of welfare reform. Third, many rural areas have experienced 

significant caseload declines but still have a high proportion of their 

families receiving TANF. Whether TANF recipients in these communities 

will be able to find jobs and become self-sufficient depends, in part, on the 

conditions in the communities where they live, such as the availability of 

jobs, transportation, child care, and dental and medical care. The 

disadvantaged socioeconomic conditions in these communities are likely 

to pose challenges to the clients’ ability to leave TANF and become selfsufficient. Rural TANF programs we visited have developed some 

strategies to help them address the challenges their clients face, but the 

challenges continue. 

 35In 2001, the Secretary of HHS initiated an HHS-wide rural initiative by appointing a crossdepartment task force to explore options and opportunities for strengthening rural 

America. The HHS Rural Task Force members are charged with examining ways to 

improve and enhance health care and human services for rural Americans. Among the HHS 

Rural Task Force accomplishments is the establishment of the Rural Assistance Center 

(RAC). RAC is an online national resource for rural health and human services information. 

RAC’s Web site is located at http://www.raconline.org. 

Concluding 

Observations 
Page 38 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

ACF has paid attention to rural areas in its administration of the federal 

TANF block grant and has several efforts under way, such as its rural 

demonstration study and its rural task force, that should be helpful in 

addressing rural challenges. ACF can build upon these efforts by 

continuing to look for ways to support rural TANF programs and by 

continuing to support activities like the Mississippi Delta EITC initiative 

and the creation of a rural e-mail Listserv that could help spread the word 

about interesting strategies being used in rural areas. 

We provided a draft of this report to HHS for its review. A copy of HHS’ 

response is in appendix IV. In its response, HHS said the report was 

informative and did not disagree with any of the findings. HHS noted that 

ACF has undertaken several activities focused on rural TANF, as cited in 

the report. Further, HHS said it plans to establish a link to the final report 

on its Welfare Peer Technical Assistance Network Web page to facilitate 

rural TANF providers’ access to the report. HHS also provided technical 

comments on the draft, and in response to these comments, we made 

changes where appropriate. 

As agreed with your offices, unless you publicly announce its contents 

earlier, we plan no further distribution of this report until 30 days after its 

issue date. At that time we will send copies of this report to appropriate 

congressional committees and other interested parties. We will also make 

copies available to others on request. In addition, the report will be 

available at no charge on GAO’s Web site at http://www.gao.gov. 

If you have any questions concerning this report, please contact me or 

Clarita Mrena at (202) 512-7215. See appendix V for other contributors to 

this report. 

Cynthia M. Fagnoni, Managing Director 

Education, Workforce, and 

 Income Security Issues 

Agency Comments 

and Our Evaluation 
Appendix I: Scope and Methodology of TANF 

Caseload Data Analysis 

Page 39 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

To address questions about the rural Temporary Assistance for Needy 

Families (TANF) caseload, we collected and analyzed county-level TANF 

caseload data from states. Below are details about these data and the 

analysis. 

• Time period covered by caseload data. We obtained average monthly 

caseload data for the years 1997 through 2003. These data show the 

number of families who received cash assistance, on average, during the 

months of each year. Average monthly caseload is calculated by adding 

the caseload for each month of the year and dividing by the number of 

months. For some states, for some years, (primarily 1997 and 2003), the 

caseload data we obtained are for fewer than 12 months of the year. For 

most states, the data are for the calendar year, but for some states (noted 

in app. III) the data are for the state fiscal year. 

• Number of states covered by analysis. Different states were used for 

the different analyses included in the report. 

• Analysis of 2003 rural and urban TANF caseload data (used to 

determine the percentage of TANF families living in rural areas) covers 

48 states, including the District of Columbia. The states not covered are 

Arizona, Delaware, and Wisconsin because we were not able to obtain 

reliable caseload data from these states in time for our analysis. 

• Analysis of 2003 rural only TANF caseload data (used in figs. 1 and 

2 and table 1 of app. II) covers 45 states—all states from which we 

were able to obtain reliable caseload data, except the District of 

Columbia, New Jersey, and Rhode Island, which do not have rural 

counties. 

• Analysis of rural and urban caseload changes for the period 1997 

through 2003 (used in fig. 3) covers 37 states that provided reliable 

caseload data for each of those 7 years—California, Colorado, District 

of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, 

Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, 

Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North 

Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South 

Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, 

Washington, and Wyoming. 

• Analysis of rural caseload changes for the years 1997 to 2003 (used in 

fig. 4 and table 2 of app. II) covers 37 states that provided reliable 

caseload data for the years 1997 and 2003 and that have rural 

counties—California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, 

Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, 

Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New 

Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, 

Appendix I: Scope and Methodology of TANF 

Caseload Data Analysis 
Appendix I: Scope and Methodology of TANF 

Caseload Data Analysis 

Page 40 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, 

Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming. 

• Types of cases included in caseload data. The cases included in our 

data are families in states’ welfare programs, including families who 

received cash assistance paid for with TANF funds and families whose 

cash assistance was paid for with state maintenance-of-effort (MOE) 

dollars1

 required by the TANF block grant.2 Some states have moved 

families from a program paid for with TANF dollars to one paid for with 

MOE dollars, and we included such families in our data in order to get a 

complete picture of the rural welfare caseload and how it has changed 

over time. In the report, we refer to all the cases in our data as TANF 

cases. A small number of cases from tribal TANF programs may be 

included in some states’ data, but generally, cases from tribal TANF 

programs are not included in our data. 

• Data reliability check. To check the reliability of the data we collected 

from states, we compared the TANF caseload data we collected from each 

state (a combined total for all counties in a state) with ACF’s statewide 

caseload data for the years 1997-2003.3

 When we found significant 

differences between the two sets of data, we identified reasons that would 

account for the differences.4

 When we were unable to account for the 

differences, we excluded from our analysis the data for the year or years 

for which there were unaccountable differences. 

• Demographic and socioeconomic data. In our analysis, we used data on 

county demographics and socioeconomic characteristics, such as 

population, unemployment rates, and median income. The U.S. 

Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (ERS) provided 

 1

For more information on the programs that provide cash assistance using state 

maintenance-of-effort dollars, see GAO, Welfare Reform: With TANF Flexibility, States 

Vary in How They Implement Work Requirements and Time Limits, GAO-02-770 

(Washington, D.C.: July 5, 2002). 

2

The caseload data we collected from states often differ from the TANF caseload data the 

Administration for Children and Families (ACF ) reports for states because the data we 

collected includes MOE cases and may have been computed using different time periods 

and criteria than data used for the ACF caseload. 

3

ACF does not have TANF caseload data by county; therefore, our reliability check was 

done at the state level. 

4

We considered differences of over 10 percent of the ACF data to be significant. Examples 

of reasons for differences between the caseload data we collected from states and ACF 

data are the use of different time frames and criteria for computing the data. 
Appendix I: Scope and Methodology of TANF 

Caseload Data Analysis 

Page 41 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

data for our analysis that it compiled from the Bureau of the Census and 

the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In addition, ERS provided data that it 

developed on counties’ classifications that we used to determine whether 

counties were rural or urban. In order to determine the proportion of the 

general population receiving TANF cash assistance, we divided 2003 TANF 

caseload data (TANF families) by 2000 Census data on the number of 

families in each county. We estimate that our resulting percentage is, on 

average, biased upward by about 0.1 percentage point. 
Appendix II: Comparisons of Demographic 

and Socioeconomic Characteristics of 

Counties with Different TANF Characteristics 

Page 42 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

To determine how counties with different TANF caseload characteristics 

compared, we put counties into four groups and looked at the 

demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of each group. Table 1 

shows the characteristics of groups of counties with different proportions 

of the population receiving TANF. Table 2 shows the characteristics of 

groups of counties with different degrees of TANF caseload change from 

1997 to 2003. 

Table 1: Comparison of Characteristics of Rural Counties with Different Proportions of Their Population on TANF 

 County characteristics 

Rural counties 

grouped 

according to 

the proportion 

of their 

population 

receiving TANF 

Average 

unemployment 

rate in 2002 

Average 

poverty 

rate 

in 2000 

Average 

median 

income in 

2000

Average 

percentage 

African 

American 

in 2000

Average 

percentage 

of families 

headed by 

single 

mothers 

with 

children in 

2000

Average 

percentage 

of 

population 

with no 

high 

school 

diploma in 

2000 

Average 

percentage 

change in 

caseload, 

1997-2003

Average 

percentage 

change in 

number of 

all families, 

1990-2000

Lowest 

proportion 4.8 11.6 $35,300 2.0 6.4 19.3 -51.3 4.4

2nd lowest 

proportion 5.6 12.8 $34,300 5.2 7.7 22.5 -35.3 6.5

2nd highest 

proportion 6.4 14.8 $32,700 9.5 9.1 25.3 -29.9 6.2

Highest 

proportion 7.8 19.6 $29,300 15.4 11.5 29.9 -21.0 4.9

Source: GAO analysis of data provided by the Economic Research Service derived from the Bureau of the Census and the Bureau of 

Labor Statistics, in combination with data provided by 45 states with rural counties on the average number of families receiving cash 

assistance under state TANF programs during months of 2003. 

Note: The counties are grouped into quarters, with the 25 percent of counties with the lowest 

proportion of the population on TANF in the row for “lowest proportion” and so forth. Each quarter 

includes 496 or 497 counties. Data for the District of Columbia, New Jersey, and Rhode Island are 

not included because they do not have rural counties. 

Appendix II: Comparisons of Demographic 

and Socioeconomic Characteristics of 

Counties with Different TANF Characteristics
Appendix II: Comparisons of Demographic 

and Socioeconomic Characteristics of 

Counties with Different TANF Characteristics 

Page 43 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

Table 2: Comparison of Characteristics of Rural Counties with Different Degrees of TANF Caseload Change, 1997-2003 

 County characteristics 

Rural 

counties 

grouped 

according to 

degree of 

caseload 

change from 

1997 to 2003 

Average 

unemployment 

rate in 2002 

Average

change in 

unemployment 

rate, 

1997-2002

Average 

number of 

families in 

2000

Average 

percentage 

change in 

number of 

all 

families, 

1990-2000

Average 

median 

income in 

2000

Average 

percentage 

of families 

headed by 

single 

mothers 

with 

children in 

2000 

Average 

percentage 

of 

population 

with no 

high 

school 

diploma in 

2000

Average 

percentage 

change in 

caseload, 

1997-2003

Greatest 

decrease 5.9 0.04 6,113 3.7 $32,400 8.2 23.5 -72.9

2nd greatest 

decrease 6.5 -0.03 6,665 6.0 $31,600 9.2 26.0 -50.6

3rd greatest 

decrease 6.0 0.04 6,034 5.6 $32,400 9.0 24.8 -33.2

Increase and 

least decrease 5.6 0.41 5,673 6.7 $34,600 7.9 22.9 18.9

Source: GAO analysis of data provided by the Economic Research Service derived from the Bureau of the Census and the Bureau of 

Labor Statistics, in combination with data provided by 34 states with rural counties on the average number of families receiving cash 

assistance under state TANF programs during the years 1997 through 2003. 

Note: The counties are grouped into quarters, with the 25 percent of counties with the most caseload 

decrease in the row for “greatest decrease” and so forth. Each quarter includes 432 or 433 counties. 
Appendix III: TANF Caseload Data by State 

Page 44 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

Average monthly 

TANF caseload in 

CY 2003 

Percentage of 

TANF caseload

in CY 2003 

Percentage 

change in TANF 

caseload 

CY 1997-2003 

CY 2003 TANF 

caseload as a 

percentage of 

number of all 

families in 2000 

Percentage 

change 

in number of all 

families, 

1990-2000 

Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural

Alabama 13,628 5,741 70.4 29.6 1.6 1.6 9.3 9.8

Alaska 3,620 1,674 68.4 31.6 3.6 3.2 14.5 9.6

Arkansas 6,120 4,859 55.7 44.3 1.5 1.5 16.3 6.1

Arizonaa . 

California 466,980 11,340 97.6 2.4 -39.2 -41.2 6.1 5.5 9.8 6.8

Coloradob 12,561 2,313 84.5 15.6 -40.6 -32.8 1.4 1.5 26.0 25.2

Connecticut 21,131 1,158 94.8 5.2 2.6 1.5 0.8 3.3

Delawarec 

District of 

Columbiad 17,071 0 100.0 0.0 -27.2 15.0 -7.6

Florida 55,663 4,460 92.6 7.4 -61.4 -62.0 1.4 1.6 18.8 21.1

Georgia 43,579 14,848 74.6 25.4 -40.5 -42.8 2.6 3.4 24.7 14.1

Hawaiie 9,190 4,400 67.6 32.4 -39.4 -44.1 4.5 5.4 3.0 21.8

Idaho 1,151 595 65.9 34.1 -24.0 -35.6 0.6 0.5 33.5 16.0

Illinois 36,367 3,413 91.4 8.6 -79.5 -81.5 1.4 0.8 6.6 -0.9

Indiana 45,214 7,832 85.2 14.8 24.7 30.4 3.7 2.1 8.5 4.7

Iowa 11,398 8,560 57.1 42.9 -28.8 -27.6 2.9 2.3 7.7 -1.4

Kansas 9,836 5,303 65.0 35.0 -19.2 -15.3 2.3 1.9 10.9 -1.8

Kentucky 15,089 16,883 47.2 52.8 -42.5 -52.6 2.5 3.4 9.4 6.6

Louisiana 16,578 6,804 70.9 29.1 -55.0 -57.0 1.9 2.3 6.0 3.2

Maine 6,775 5,443 55.5 44.6 -24.7 -29.5 3.5 3.7 4.4 1.2

Maryland 27,780 1,041 96.4 3.6 -53.3 -45.3 2.2 1.4 8.0 12.2

Massachusetts 44,773 8 100.0 0.0 2.9 0.1 3.3 33.1

Michigan 65,357 7,988 89.1 10.9 -51.8 -49.5 3.2 1.7 3.6 9.6

Minnesotaf 34,238 11,379 75.1 25.0 3.9 3.1 12.1 5.9

Mississippi 6,285 13,482 31.8 68.2 -39.4 -43.4 2.0 3.1 15.6 6.4

Missouri 32,742 12,174 72.9 27.1 -34.4 -21.1 3.1 2.9 7.0 7.6

Montanag 1,911 4,252 31.0 69.0 -32.5 -31.0 2.3 2.7 8.8 12.4

Nebraska 8,200 3,916 67.7 32.3 -1.6 -26.5 3.5 1.9 10.9 0.8

Nevadah 11,267 914 92.5 7.5 5.3 -19.8 2.6 1.5 63.4 39.2

New 

Hampshire 3,262 2,422 57.4 42.6 -23.2 -17.2 1.6 2.0 10.4 9.0

New Jersey 41,599 0 100.0 0.0 -57.5 1.9 5.7

Appendix III: TANF Caseload Data by State 
Appendix III: TANF Caseload Data by State 

Page 45 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

Average monthly 

TANF caseload in 

CY 2003 

Percentage of 

TANF caseload

in CY 2003 

Percentage 

change in TANF 

caseload 

CY 1997-2003 

CY 2003 TANF 

caseload as a 

percentage of 

number of all 

families in 2000 

Percentage 

change 

in number of all 

families, 

1990-2000 

Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural

New Mexico 10,716 5,744 65.1 34.9 3.7 3.3 21.8 12.4

New York 180,519 8,093 95.7 4.3 -49.3 -49.8 4.3 2.0 2.8 -1.0

North Carolina 27,366 13,198 67.5 32.5 -54.7 -63.5 1.9 1.9 20.9 13.4

North Dakota 1,040 2,241 31.7 68.3 -11.0 -18.5 1.5 2.3 8.1 -7.0

Ohio 75,104 11,582 86.6 13.4 -49.8 -55.3 3.1 1.9 2.4 3.7

Oklahomai 10,060 4,695 68.2 31.8 -50.9 -61.8 1.8 1.3 9.3 2.7

Oregon 13,106 4,605 74.0 26.0 -15.0 -36.1 2.0 2.1 18.1 9.5

Pennsylvania 78,718 8,308 90.5 9.6 2.9 1.6 0.6 3.2.

Rhode Island 14,136 0 100.0 0 -25.1 5.3 1.8

South Carolina 12,803 6,895 65.0 35.0 -35.9 -35.5 1.6 2.5 15.0 13.6

South Dakota 637 2,141 22.9 77.1 -45.7 -40.7 0.8 1.9 15.1 1.3

Tennessee 57,664 13,897 80.6 19.4 14.3 3.4 5.2 3.1 14.3 13.6

Texasj 116,857 21,183 84.7 15.4 -36.9 -38.4 2.6 2.8 21.9 7.9

Utah 8,173 1,275 86.5 13.5 -15.0 -48.1 1.7 1.9 30.3 24.3

Vermont 1,574 3,365 31.9 68.1 -31.5 -38.7 3.2 3.1 12.4 6.5

Virginia 25,481 6,333 80.1 19.9 -39.0 -27.6 1.7 2.1 14.1 6.2

Washington 46,685 7,985 85.4 14.6 -37.2 -33.9 3.6 4.1 17.6 16.6

West Virginiak 7,064 8,610 45.1 54.9 -53.9 -51.3 2.6 3.7 2.0 -1.8

Wisconsinl  

Wyomingm 62 106 36.9 63.1 -91.8 -92.7 0.2 0.1 6.6 8.2

Source: GAO analysis of data provided by the Economic Research Service derived from the Bureau of the Census and the Bureau of

Labor Statistics, in combination with data provided by 48 states on the average number of families receiving cash assistance under 

state TANF programs in 2003. 

Note: CY = calendar year. Unless otherwise noted, caseload data include families receiving monthly 

cash assistance under state TANF programs and under programs funded with state maintenance-ofeffort dollars, if the state has such a program. 

a

We did not obtain data from Arizona. 

b

Colorado data include families receiving diversion payments, as well as families receiving monthly 

cash assistance. 

c

We did not obtain data from Delaware. 

d

District of Columbia caseload data were obtained from ACF. 

e

Hawaii data for 1997 and 1998 are for state fiscal year. 

f

Minnesota data include some families (about 10 percent of the total caseload) who are no longer 

receiving cash assistance but are receiving federally funded food assistance. According to a 

Minnesota official, Minnesota has integrated food assistance into its welfare program, and some 

families in the program who have begun working are no longer eligible for cash payments but are 

eligible for food assistance. 
Appendix III: TANF Caseload Data by State 

Page 46 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

g

Montana data are for state fiscal year. 

h

Nevada data are for state fiscal year. 

i

Oklahoma data are for state fiscal year. 

j

Texas data are for state fiscal year. 

k

West Virginia data are for state fiscal year. 

l

We did not obtain reliable data from Wisconsin.

m

Wyoming data for two counties, Northern Arapaho and East Shoshone, are not included because 

changes in caseload over the period would largely be attributable to movement from state- to tribalrun programs rather than participants moving off TANF. 
Appendix IV: Comments from the Department of Health and Human Services 

Page 47 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

Appendix IV: Comments from the 

Department of Health and Human Services 
Appendix IV: Comments from the Department of Health and Human Services 

Page 48 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 
Appendix IV: Comments from the Department of Health and Human Services 

Page 49 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 
Appendix V: GAO Contacts and Staff 

Acknowledgments 

Page 50 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

Clarita Mrena, (202) 512-3022 

Kathy Peyman, (202) 512-9536 

In addition to those named above, Kenneth Adams, Tiffany Boiman, Amy 

Buck, Cindy Decker, Lise Levie, Angela Miles, Jerry Sandau, and Jay Smale 

made key contributions to this report.

Appendix V: GAO Contacts and Staff 

Acknowledgments 

GAO Contacts 

Staff 

Acknowledgments 
Bibliography 

Page 51 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

Bosley, Sarah, and Bradford Mills. How Welfare Reform Impacts Nonmetropolitan and Metropolitan Counties in Virginia. Rural Development 

Program for Community Vitality. Virginia Tech, September 1999. 

Burwick, Andrew, Vinita Jethwani, and Alicia Meckstroth. Implementing 

Welfare-to-Work Programs in Rural Places: Lessons from the Rural 

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Duncan, Greg, Leslie Whitener, and Bruce Weber. “Lessons Learned: 

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Fletcher, Cynthia Needles, Jan Flora, Barbara Gaddis, Mary Winter and 

Jacquelyn Litt. “Small Towns and Welfare Reform: Iowa Case Studies of 

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Friedman, Pamela. Transportation Needs in Rural Communities. Rural 

Assistance Center, March 2004. 

http://www.raconline.org/info_guides/transportation/issuenote.html 

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Duncan, and Leslie A. Whitener, 51-75. Kalamazoo, Michigan: W. E. Upjohn 

Institute for Employment Research, 2002. 

Harvey, Mark, Gene F. Summers, Kathleen Pickering, and Patricia 

Richards. “The Short-Term Impacts of Welfare Reform in Persistently Poor 

Rural Areas.” In Rural Dimensions of Welfare Reform, edited by Bruce A. 

Weber, Greg J. Duncan, and Leslie A. Whitener, 375-409. Kalamazoo, 

Michigan: W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2002. 

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Lerman, Robert I., Signe-Mary McKernan, and Nancy Pindus. “Welfare 

Reforms and Employment of Single Mothers: Are Rural Areas Keeping 

Pace?” Rural America 16 (2001): 22-27. 

Lichter, Daniel T., and Leif Jensen. “Poverty and Welfare among Rural 

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Related GAO Products 

Page 53 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

Welfare Reform: Information on TANF Balances. GAO-03-1094. 

Washington, D.C.: September 8, 2003. 

Welfare Reform: Information on Changing Labor Market and State 

Fiscal Conditions. GAO-03-977. Washington, D.C.: July 15, 2003. 

Transportation-Disadvantaged Populations: Some Coordination Efforts 

Among Programs Providing Transportation Services, but Obstacles 

Persist. GAO-03-697. Washington, D.C.: June 30, 2003. 

Child Care: Recent State Policy Changes Affecting the Availability of 

Assistance for Low-Income Families. GAO-03-588. Washington, D.C.: May 

5, 2003. 

Welfare Reform: Job Access Program Improves Local Service 

Coordination, but Evaluation Should be Completed. GAO-03-204. 

Washington, D.C.: December 6, 2002. 

Child Care: States Exercise Flexibility in Setting Reimbursement Rates 

and Providing Access for Low-Income Children. GAO-02-894. 

Washington, D.C.: September 18, 2002. 

Welfare Reform: With TANF Flexibility, States Vary in How They 

Implement Work Requirements and Time Limits. GAO-02-770. 

Washington, D.C.: July 5, 2002. 

Workforce Investment Act: States and Localities Increasingly Coordinate 

Services for TANF Clients, but Better Information Needed on Effective 

Approaches. GAO-02-696. Washington, D.C.: July 3, 2002. 

Welfare Reform: States Provide TANF-Funded Work Support Services to 

Many Low-Income Families Who Do Not Receive Cash Assistance. 

GAO-02-615T. Washington, D.C.: April 10, 2002. 

Welfare Reform: States Provide TANF-Funded Services to Many LowIncome Families Who Do Not Receive Cash Assistance. GAO-02-564. 

Washington, D.C.: April 5, 2002. 

Human Services Integration: Results of a GAO Cosponsored Conference 

on Modernizing Information Systems. GAO-02-121. Washington, D.C.: 

January 31, 2002. 

Related GAO Products 
Related GAO Products 

Page 54 GAO-04-921 Welfare Reform 

Means-Tested Programs: Determining Financial Eligibility Is 

Cumbersome and Can Be Simplified. GAO-02-58. Washington, D.C.: 

November 2, 2001. 

Welfare Reform: Challenges in Maintaining a Federal-State Fiscal 

Partnership. GAO-01-828. Washington, D.C.: August 10, 2001. 

Welfare Reform: Moving Hard-to-Employ Recipients into the 

Workforce. GAO-01-368. Washington, D.C.: March 15, 2001. 

Welfare Reform: Improving State Automated Systems Requires 

Coordinated Federal Effort. GAO/HEHS-00-48. Washington, D.C.: April 27, 

2000. 

Domestic Violence: Prevalence and Implications for Employment among 

Welfare Recipients. GAO/HEHS-99-12. Washington, D.C.: November 24, 

1998. 

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