County social services agencies with such leadership maintained the focus on moving people into work, and only two of the six sites visited were located in states that exempt disabled recipients from work requirements. However, staff in such agencies were found to have wide discretion to place recipients in activities that do not count toward the state's work participation rate such as a mental health program.
The report suggests that proposals to change the level of available TANF funds or to change the work participation rules should be approached with caution so that the flexibility used to serve disabled recipients is not lost. The consequences of TANF work and time-limit policies for families with disabilities depend upon state policies with respect to accommodation and exemption.
The tabulation of exemption procedures that are included in state TANF manuals see Rowe and Russell indicates that by , 33 states formally exempted heads of TANF families from work requirements if they are ill or incapacitated, and 34 states exempted heads if they are caring for an ill or incapacitated person. The GAO survey GAO a asked administrators about their practice of granting exemptions from work requirements and time limits.
Thirty-six percent reported that they exempt TANF recipients with impairments from work requirements and from state time limits, but 27 percent reported exempting such recipients only from the work requirements. About one-third reported exempting recipients caring for a disabled child from the time limit and the work requirement.
Twenty-eight percent exempt such caregivers only from the work requirement. The significance of exemptions from work requirements is diminished, of course, if the state has a time limit on assistance and if exemption from work requirements does not stop the clock by exempting the recipient from the time limit. States generally have latitude to help large numbers of recipients, including recipients with disabilities, avoid being subject to time limits.
Under TANF rules, states are allowed to continue the use of federal funds after 5 years for up to 20 percent of all cases that are the result of various hardships including disabilities. Since the allowable exclusion is based on all cases, states could potentially and on average exempt one-third of all cases with adults from time limits on the grounds of disability and other hardships 20 percent of all cases is one-third of the 61 percent that were not child only. In , 30 states had formal extension provisions for time limits for cases in which adults are disabled or caring for a disabled family member Bloom and others , Regulations in all but one of the remaining states provided for extensions on a case-by-case basis Bloom and others , Table A.
Additionally, four states specifically included persons with disabilities in the separate programs, which are not under federal time limits GAO b. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act is intended to promote the employment of welfare recipients through the application of incentives and penalties.
After the previous discussion of key policy changes of particular importance to persons with disabilities, this section looks at two key outcomes: employment and sanctions. How do TANF recipients with disabilities fare compared with those without disabilities? Most surveys have too few observations on TANF recipients with disabilities to support comparative analysis of characteristics of families that report disabilities and those of families that do not.
Nonetheless, it is common to find that rates of employment are lower among TANF recipients reporting disabilities than among those not reporting disabilities. Kim used the Current Population Survey data from to examine employment outcomes at an early stage of welfare reform.
She found that a disabled TANF recipient was GAO 's study a, 11 examined work among those currently on the rolls. The study found that "20 percent of TANF recipients with impairments were working full- or part-time in , compared with 44 percent of TANF recipients reporting no impairments [who were working]. State-level findings are similar.
For example, Danziger and others used survey data to examine work outcomes of TANF recipients in Michigan, a state with very generous financial incentives for work and no time limit. They find statistically significant differences between those with health barriers and those with none.
Of those not suffering from a major depressive disorder, Those mothers with no health problems worked at least 20 hours per week in Further, the likelihood of working was even much less for those affected by multiple barriers to work. Likewise, Danziger, Kalil, and Anderson's study of recipients with barriers to work found those with physical and mental impairments were even less likely to work if their impairments were compounded with other barriers.
It must be noted, however, that even for persons with disabilities who have never had a TANF connection, employment results have been dismal during the past decade Burkhauser, Daly, and Houtenville The emphasis on the obligation of recipients to work has been a keynote of state welfare reforms.
The obligation has been enforced by reducing or eliminating benefits for families with adults who do not comply with program requirements. Disabilities may raise the likelihood that families fail to meet various requirements for sustaining TANF eligibility once it is achieved.
Such failures generally result in sanctions that reduce benefits and can ultimately result in the loss of eligibility for the entire family in some states, until the family is again in compliance with program rules. Thus, the incidence of sanctions and the circumstances of noncompliance with work requirements are of special interest for those interested in the role of TANF in supporting families with disabilities.
According to the GAO survey of county welfare administrators, the majority about 60 percent attempt to notify and warn a recipient household at least twice that they are not complying with TANF rules and face a sanction GAO a. In the states with time limits shorter than the federal 5-year funding maximum, almost 75 percent of counties reported that recipients who are nearing the time limit are evaluated for disabilities or impairments.
The GAO also found that about two-thirds of the counties surveyed reported that recipients not conforming to work requirements are evaluated for disabilities or impairments that might prevent them from working GAO a.
Although there is some evidence that the rates of sanctioning have declined since the s, sanctions are regularly applied in most states. In , the General Accounting Office reported on the application of sanctions in an average month in across several states GAO In the states providing data on all sanctions, 5. In those states providing data on full-family sanctions which are a complete loss of TANF benefits for a household, at least temporarily , only 0.
More than half of the full-family sanctions were due to a failure to comply with work requirements. Despite indications of administrative attention to the problem of disability-related noncompliance, there is evidence that households facing disabilities or impairments are sanctioned more frequently than others.
Goldberg and Schott cite several studies showing that health problems and disabilities are a major cause of the noncompliance that results in TANF sanctions. A Utah study, for example, found that more than one-third of the state's sanctions resulted from physical health problems that prevented recipients from working, while one-fifth resulted from mental health problems.
More recently, Goldberg reviewed data that suggest that certain states are disproportionately sanctioning recipients who have disabilities or face other barriers. Other research supports the above findings cited. For example, the GAO has cited the Utah report as well as other studies of sanctioned families conducted early in the welfare reform period in Iowa, Michigan, and Minnesota.
Each found greater prevalence of health problems in sanctioned families than in the caseloads in general. In , the ongoing research by Cherlin and others resulted in a brief on sanctions in three cities that showed that more recipients who were sanctioned were in poor or fair health than were those not sanctioned.
A report issued by MDRC in Polit, London, and Martinez that used surveys of more than 3, women and in-depth interviews in four major urban areas found that the likelihood of sanctions seemed to increase with the number of health barriers that the family faced.
Only These differences are statistically significant. It should be noted, however, that this MDRC study includes within its definition of health barriers several factors that are not considered health impairments in the other studies discussed and that are beyond the scope of this article. Although these comparisons present many problems, it appears that despite the various accommodations made for welfare families affected by disabilities or health-related impairments in some states, recipients with disabilities are, overall, disproportionately sanctioned for noncompliance with TANF rules.
This may imply that sanctions do not always hinge on a recipient's willingness to work, as Congress intended, but rather on a recipient's ability to do so. However, there may be an identification problem with this research insofar as disability is generally self-reported.
It is possible that some recipients who fail to comply with an agency's obligations may feel, when queried, a social obligation to ascribe such failure to factors beyond their control, such as poor health or impairments. The changes in welfare policy in also changed the policy environment of the Supplemental Security Income program.
With the SSI program, the federal government assumed financial responsibility for the needs of low-income disabled children. At the time of transfer, many of these children were already in families receiving support through AFDC. AFDC was funded under a matching grant system in which state and federal governments shared responsibility for administrative and benefit costs.
Regardless, in virtually all states, a move from AFDC to SSI saved states money, because the core SSI benefit is percent federally funded and states were not obligated to increase their total contributions toward SSI supplements when the number of recipients increased. This remains the case under TANF in at least some states.
Practices in five states are described in Sherman : for example, two states use third-party contractors to provide legal representation and assistance in the SSI and Social Security Disability Insurance application and appeals processes. The change could substantially increase benefits for the families involved. Between in AFDC and in TANF , 7 states reduced the maximum nominal cash benefit available to families, 25 held cash benefits constant, and 19 increased benefits.
In none of the 19 states did the increase in benefits match inflation. Obviously, the incentives for making the transfer have grown.
Aside from covering family members ineligible for SSI , the great advantage of AFDC for persons with disabilities was that eligibility could typically be determined much more quickly than what commonly occurred in SSI. Moreover, two-parent families made poor by a parent's disability were granted AFDC benefits under a special provision that was more lenient than the SSI rules.
Although there is no empirical evidence on this point, it is likely that the influence of the relative generosity of the SSI program went beyond simply motivating applications. It may have also reduced the incentive that adult AFDC recipients had for undertaking efforts to work or rehabilitate while awaiting a decision on SSI eligibility, since applicants could fear that work in any job could be interpreted as evidence of an applicant's ability to sustain substantial gainful activity.
Garrett and Glied find that, at the beginning of the s, the rate at which children in a state received SSI was inversely related to the size of state AFDC benefits and positively related to the amount of state supplementation of the federal benefit rate, even holding measures of family income constant. Similar results are reported by Kubick When the SSI beneficiary is a child, the family budget unit is generally constructed as if the child were not present.
When the SSI beneficiary is the parent, that adult is typically excluded from the family budget unit, and TANF payments are made on behalf of the child or children. According to state data provided to the Department of Health and Human Services, by , on average Between fiscal years and , the caseload fell, but the prevalence of SSI receipt in the households that included TANF recipients rose.
On average for each month of fiscal year , an estimated , TANF recipient families included at least one child on whose behalf the parent or caretaker was receiving SSI benefits Table 4. Thus, in any month in that year, about Each year the Social Security Administration creates a 10 percent sample of cases from all SSI cases in "active-pay" status.
For children, the administrative data extracted include information on whether or not the recipients were receiving TANF or AFDC at the time of the application that commenced the current spell or at the time of any prior application on their behalf. Although ideally the data would be confined only to the recipient's status at the point of the most recent application, it is unlikely that the difference between the ideal and what we have is important, especially for children.
More reliably because there is less chance that their current receipt of SSI benefits is not their first , slightly more than one-third of all children similarly defined had been at the time of an SSI application in families receiving TANF.
Despite differences of disability definitions and sampled populations, most analyses imply that at least one-third of all TANF recipient households include an adult or child with a disability. Sanctioning rates of families with disabilities exceed those for families without disabilities, and continuing poverty is more common among cases that close. Although most states have policies that seek to accommodate TANF recipients with disabilities, outcomes in terms of sanctions applied or employment obtained show that much still needs to be done.
In effect, TANF serves as a second-order safety net for a portion of the disabled population whose disabilities are not severe enough to meet SSI standards or who are SSI recipients-in-waiting. The interests of families with children with disabilities are best served either by applying for SSI benefits if the disability appears sufficiently severe or, if not, by providing other supports. For adults with disabilities, TANF agencies need to perform a sort of triage.
If the disability equals or exceeds the standard of substantial gainful activity, the objective should be to establish the applicant's eligibility and, once benefits begin, to adjust TANF strategy for other members of the family accordingly.
If the disability clearly does not preclude work, the challenge is to assemble the services needed to support it. Frequently Asked Questions. The Social Security and Supplemental Security Income disability programs are the largest of several Federal programs that provide assistance to people with disabilities. While these two programs are different in many ways, both are administered by the Social Security Administration and only individuals who have a disability and meet medical criteria may qualify for benefits under either program.
Social Security Disability Insurance pays benefits to you and certain members of your family if you are "insured," meaning that you worked long enough and paid Social Security taxes. Contact your local State or local medical assistance Medicaid office, social service office or welfare office for more information. Some States offer state or local assistance based on need to aged, blind, and disabled people through the State welfare department.
The State may require you to apply for SSI if you receive state or local assistance based on need. If we approve you for SSI, your State or local public assistance payments will usually stop.
Your State may be entitled to collect part of your retroactive SSI benefits as repayment for the money they paid you while we processed your SSI claim. Medicaid is linked to receipt of SSI benefits in most States. This is the first month after the end of the month EPE. However, we must determine whether the person continues to meet the non-disability requirements, including income and resources.
We now add the countable unearned income and the countable earned income to determine total countable income:. Here is how we figure his SSI eligibility and payment amount for January We subtract both the general income exclusion and earned income exclusion from monthly earnings:. However, he may then be eligible to buy into Medicaid if he resides in a state that has the optional Medicaid buy-in program.
Armando will no longer receive SSDI payments, but his Medicare coverage will continue for at least 93 months after his TWP which ended September as long as he continues to have a disabling impairment has not medically improved.
If he purchases Part A, he can purchase Part B. He can qualify for the Part A reduced rate since he has earned at least 30 quarters of coverage. Armando will have to file an application with Social Security if he decides to purchase Medicare coverage in
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