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This report was prepared for the Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture under Cooperative Agreement 43-3AEM-8-80103. The views expressed are those of the author and should not be attributed to the Economic Research Service or to the Urban Institute, its
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
I. Introduction
Expectations about Welfare Reform in Rural Areas
II. Methodology and Site Profiles
Site Selection and Data Collection
III. Findings/Themes
Economic, Demographic, and Social Factors
Service Availability
Policies That May Affect Rural Areas Differently and Their Implementation
IV. Solutions, Promising Practices, and Innovations
Education and Training
Transportation and Accessibility
Supportive Services
Community Involvement
V. Conclusions and Policy Implications
TANF and Food Stamp Policy Implications
Policy Research Implications
References
Appendix: Site Profiles
I. Introduction
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant. PRWORA changed the nation’s welfare system from an entitlement program for income-eligible families to a program that provides time-limited assistance and requires recipients to participate in work-focused activities. PRWORA granted states broad flexibility to tailor their TANF programs with respect to
exemptions, sanctions, and required activities. In considering these three key aspects of PRWORA—work requirements, time-limited benefits, and state flexibility—questions arise about the implementation of welfare reform and the variations in policies and practices between states and within states. One geographic dimension potentially important in the welfare implementation process concerns the dispersion of the population. This paper asks: how did areas with sparse populations, mostly rural areas, respond to the welfare changes introduced with PRWORA? The paper is part of a broader study considering the effects of welfare reform on households in rural areas. A combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods was used to analyze the complexities in program rules, program implementation, and local economic
factors, and their combined effects on welfare recipients in rural areas.1 This report describes the findings of our qualitative work that examined welfare implementation and availability of services in 12 rural communities.
Expectations about Welfare Reform in Rural Areas
We came to this study with the expectation that welfare reform would work out differently in rural areas than in urban areas. The literature on rural poverty indicates that rural welfare families may be more vulnerable than their urban counterparts due to the work focus and time-limited nature of TANF. Vulnerability may be greater in rural areas because there are fewer work opportunities, greater barriers to obtaining employment, and fewer options available to replace welfare. Early evidence indicates that, in the time since welfare reform, caseload levels, unemployment rates for the working age poor, and child poverty rates have all declined, but that rural areas are faring worse than urban or suburban areas (Bosley and Mills 1999, Rural Policy Research Institute 1999). In fact, although both rural and urban unemployment rates declined
each year since 1992, the rural-urban gap increased, with unemployment falling more slowly in rural than in urban areas (Economic Research Service 2000).
The rural poor are more geographically dispersed than the urban poor, making it more difficult for rural residents to access social services that can assist them in finding work or supports needed to remain employed (Rural Policy Research Institute 1999). Social service agencies are often located in county seats or other population centers that can be difficult for clients in outlying areas to access, and the agencies are usually too poorly funded to provide active outreach (Deavers, Hoppe, and Ross 1986 and Burt 1996). In their study of rural-urban differences in welfare reform in Iowa communities, Fletcher et al. (2000) found that the most important difference between rural and urban communities was that urban areas had greater access to jobs and support services, especially job training and education, health care, child care, and emergency services.
Given the accessibility barriers and the higher unemployment in rural areas, welfare policy changes may place greater hardships on rural welfare recipients. For example, vehicle exemptions may impose greater restrictions on rural residents because reliable automobiles are more important for the longer commutes to work and because public transportation is more limited in rural areas. The lack of public transportation or reliable private transportation acts as a disincentive to employment, or may restrict individuals to low-paying jobs close to home. To the extent that finding employment in some rural areas may take longer than in urban areas, rural clients are more likely to lose benefits by exceeding time limits. Clients may meet work activity requirements in areas of limited employment opportunities by taking part-time jobs, working in community service positions, or undertaking job training. However, while these activities often lead to full-time employment, such transitions may be more difficult in rural areas.
On the other hand, quantitative analyses conducted as part of this study, as well as recently completed work by other researchers, indicates that the dynamics of employment, earnings, and welfare may not conform to our negative expectations about rural areas. Lerman, Duke, and Valente (1999) find slightly higher financial incentives to work in rural areas than in urban areas. Since average incomes are lower in rural than in urban areas, and since the federal Earned Income Tax Credit (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. McKernan et al. (2000) find that welfare reform is playing a major role in raising the employment rates of single mothers, and the gains are approximately as high in rural as in urban areas. Connelly (2000) finds that early work-related welfare reform waivers appear to have had a less detrimental effect on the earnings of rural than on urban recipients. Additionally, McConnell and Ohls (2000) report that rural Food Stamp Program (FSP) households are more likely than
urban households to receive income from the employment of a household member (29 percent of rural FSP households receive earned income compared with 25 percent of urban households). Thus, it appears that the pattern of geographic differences in response to welfare reform is complex.
The purpose of this paper is to learn more about welfare reform implementation in rural areas by drawing on the perspective of people operating the programs. In listening to welfare staff, service providers, and community representatives in 12 locations in four states, we focused on several key questions:
- How are rural welfare offices implementing the work requirements, time limits, and other provisions of welfare reform?
- Is access to jobs and services so limited as to prevent most recipients from adapting to the new rules?
- What are the most serious barriers to implementing welfare reform in rural areas?
The next section presents the methodology used to elicit and understand the responses of local officials to these and related questions. Section III presents our main findings concerning the themes that emerged in our interviews and analysis about welfare changes in selected rural settings. In Section IV, we describe promising practices developed at the local level to cope with the challenges of implementing welfare reform. We conclude in Section V by highlighting selected implications for policy.
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Notes
1. See Lerman, Duke, and Valente 1999, "Do Income Support Levels and Work Incentives Differ Between Rural and
Urban Areas?" and Mckernan, Lerman, Pindus, and Valente 2000, "The Relationship between Metropolitan and Non-Metropolitan Locations, Changing Welfare Policies, and the Employment of Single Mothers."
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