Page S B, Larner M B
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.
Future Child. 1997 Spring;7(1):20-7.
This journal issue discusses the policy challenges of helping parents move from welfare to work. As a foundation, this introductory article explains the federal-state program of cash assistance called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), to which the term welfare refers in most of these articles. While a number of other social programs are sometimes included under the umbrella of welfare-such as the Supplemental Security Income program for the disabled, food stamps, and Medicaid-the program that has drawn the most public scrutiny and negative attention, and the centerpiece of the 1996 welfare reform legislation, is AFDC. This article explains the basic structure of the AFDC program, including eligibility criteria and benefits; discusses the characteristics of families that have received AFDC; describes trends in the program's size and cost from the 1970s to 1996; and indicates the major ways in which the block grant established in the 1996 welfare reform legislation compares to the AFDC program that it replaced.
本期杂志探讨了帮助父母从福利转向工作所面临的政策挑战。作为基础内容，这篇介绍性文章解释了名为“对有受抚养子女家庭的援助”（AFDC）的联邦-州现金援助计划，在这些文章中，大多数情况下“福利”一词指的就是该计划。虽然有时其他一些社会项目也被纳入福利范畴，比如为残疾人提供的补充保障收入计划、食品券和医疗补助，但引起公众最多审查和负面关注且成为1996年福利改革立法核心的项目是AFDC。本文解释了AFDC计划的基本结构，包括资格标准和福利；讨论了领取AFDC的家庭的特征；描述了从20世纪70年代到1996年该计划规模和成本的趋势；并指出1996年福利改革立法中设立的整笔拨款与它所取代的AFDC计划相比的主要方式。
