Other welfare recipients who were covered by the new rules voluntarily stopped taking payments before they exhausted their benefits. Officials credit both the work requirements and a strong economy for the decline. That, combined with the effect of a robust economy, already has shrunk the state's welfare rolls by almost 41 percent, from 74,000 when the program started to 44,000 at the end of last month, say state officials. And yet, social workers say those families are particularly vulnerable to everyday disappointments and challenges. There are a lot of things that can happen.
Life can happen.
Still, she says it's time to make it on her own. But two years is enough. There's no sense for people to be on it for years. That kind of statement would have been impossible to imagine just a few years ago, she says. At 21, Marrelli was living with her parents in the small town of Burnsville, N.C., and attending Western Piedmont Community College.