title: Experiences of a conditional and punitive social safety net
title: the short- and long-term impacts on family wellbeing
titleType: Subtitle
Creators: name: White, KaLeigh Karr
Publisher: name: University of Iowa
Year: 2023
Subjects: behavioralism
conditionality
paternalism
public assistance
sanctions
welfare
public abstract

description: While social policies provide important sources of assistance and security for families, the designs of these policies can range from those that provide independence from formal labor market attachment to those that use coercive conditions or punitive sanctions to enforce behavioral expectations. Significant changes were made to the provision of cash assistance for low-income families in the US in the mid-1990s. Most important of these changes for this project was the move from an entitlement-based cash assistance program to a conditional program that included required work conditions and sanctions for non-compliance.
description: Using data on mothers from four waves of the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFWCS) from 1999 to 2010 and measures of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) state cash assistance policies from the Welfare Rules Database, this project examines how conditional behavioral requirements and punitive sanctions for noncompliance in cash assistance programs impact the wellbeing of participants. Specifically, this project uses a series of pooled and within-wave logistic regression models to examine the association between self-reported experiences of conditioning and sanctioning in cash assistance programs on material hardship, health, and sense of autonomy. This project examines the overall impacts of conditioning and sanctioning experiences on these wellbeing outcomes in the short- and long-terms and whether these impacts differ between mothers with different racial identities and across states with more or less paternalistic TANF policies.
description: The findings indicate conditions and sanctions significantly increase reports of material hardship for all mothers in the short- and long-terms. These short-term impacts to material hardship increase with the level of paternalism in the state TANF policies. Looking at the differences by race in these short-term impacts, the associations are only significant for Black and Latinx mothers, not white mothers. Sanctioning but not conditioning is associated with increased reports of suboptimal health in the short-term. These impacts of sanctions on health are marginally significant for Black mothers but not for Latinx or white mothers and depend on the level of state paternalism. In relation to sense of autonomy overall, there are no short-term differences and limited long-term differences for the impact of conditions or sanctions. Looking at differences by race, however, Latinx mothers who are conditioned are significantly more likely to report low senses of autonomy than non-conditioned Latinx mothers, but not Black or white mothers. In addition, this short-term impact for Latinx mothers increases in more paternalist states. There are no differences in the impact of sanctions on sense of autonomy by state levels of paternalism or between mothers of different racial identities.
description: Collectively, the results of this project highlight how experiences of conditions and sanctions disparately impact wellbeing outcomes among low-income mothers participating in TANF programs. This project builds on past scholarship by using direct, self-reported measures to conduct a broader temporal analysis of the impacts of conditions and sanctions on a range of wellbeing outcomes. The racial differences observed illustrate how the racialization of TANF may contribute to disparities for Black and Latinx mothers, not just in the likelihood of experiencing more paternalist policies as observed by past scholars, but also in the wellbeing outcomes associated with those experiences. Further, this project illustrates the role of decentralization of the US welfare state in contributing to disparities in wellbeing along state lines, including higher rates of material hardship in more paternalist states. These negative consequences to material wellbeing are especially important to the ongoing debates on the role of the welfare state in protecting the social rights of citizens, like economic security. Finally, the negative impacts to wellbeing highlighted by this project hold important policy implications, including cautioning the growing adoption of conditional and punitive welfare policies across the US social safety net and in welfare states around the world. To better support the wellbeing of families under current policy structures, states and program administrators may consider minimizing the burdens of conditions and more sparingly enforcing sanctions on individual participants.