Are TANF Adults Typically Long-Term Stayers?
The welfare caseload is made up of long-term recipients, of those who have come onto the TANF rolls for the first time, and of those who move on and off. The distinction is important, because the members of the continuous group may be more disadvantaged than those who have entered for the first time or who have left. For this discussion, stayers are defined as those who first received welfare more than two years ago and have been on TANF continuously for the past two years. New entrants are those who entered the welfare system for the first time in the past two years. Cyclers are those who first received welfare more than two years ago but have received it only intermittently over the past two years. The shares of the caseload in the three categories were remarkably similar in 1997 and 1999 (figure 4). In both years, about one-quarter of adults on TANF were new entrants, about one-fifth were cyclers, and almost half were stayers. These results counter the assertion sometimes made that
