What Happens If You Have No Welfare and No Job?

By Olga Khazan

A few weeks ago I wrote about how the welfare reform of the 1990s led to many poor mothers being kicked off welfare rolls. While some poor adults could still receive help from food stamps and disability insurance, the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act" dramatically cut how much cash aid they could collect. The hope was that they would find work, but many didn’t.

Meanwhile, spending on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, the only cash assistance program that non-disabled, non-elderly, poor single mothers are eligible for, has dropped precipitously: It was lower in 2007 than it had been in 1970.

That left me wondering—what happened to the moms who had neither jobs nor cash assistance through TANF, which comes with strict time limits?