Created through the Social Security Act, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) provided financial assistance to families with little income.
Enacted as Title IV of the Social Security Act of 1935. The program offered aid to poor mothers taking care of children without a husband. When enacted, it mostly functioned as assistance to states mother’s aid laws, which had been passed in 40 states between 1910 and 1920, through federal grants. 1 The federal government reimbursed states for 1/3 of their costs in a given year. This open ended funding formula was structurally the same until the implementation of Welfare Reform in 1996, which created Temporary Assistance to needy Families. (TANF).2
Participation by the states was voluntary and in 1939 eight states had no ADC program. There was little federal oversight in the original program, including a lack of protections by race or marital status. Local authorities had direction to investigate clients to determine if they were in violation of any of AFDC’s myriad regulations, reducing or eliminating them from the program if they do not comply.
Eventually the AFDC program was amended to include:1
- Extended eligibility to children living with two parents of whom one was unemployed
- Extending the age of eligible children to 18 if they attended school
- Extending eligibility to foster children and their custodians
- In 1965 the federal government increased its share of costs to 50 percent
- any other individual in the home deemed essential to the child, known as the
“essential person” option - an unborn child, in last trimester of mother’s pregnancy
For the full text of the bill, see here.
Endnotes
- https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/public-welfare/aid-to-dependent-children-the-legal-history/
- https://aspe.hhs.gov/system/files/pdf/167036/1history.pdf