A Human Rights-Based Policy Analysis of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families

Overview: Decentralized social welfare implementation leads to inequality in benefit access and adequacy, which can get overlooked in traditional models of policy analysis. A rights-based policy analysis of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families will yield important insights into its impact on human rights indicators.Proposal text: Background
The decentralized, or devolved, model of social welfare policy in the United States leads to inequality in benefit access and adequacy.[1] The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program exemplifies this with its significant implementation discretion left up to states.[2] This inequality that results from the devolved structure of TANF is said to violate a key human rights principle: the federal government’s responsibility to ensure non-discrimination based on geographic location within a country.[3] To date no robust policy analysis of TANF from a human rights-based policy lens exists in the literature. This oral paper will contribute to existing TANF literature in social work that is grounded in a rational approach to policy analysis and fails to critically analyze TANF from a human rights perspective.[4] The paper will demonstrate how a rights-based policy analysis can be used to assess the structure and implementation of a policy, which expands the analysis beyond a focus on outcomes that is central to most traditional policy analysis approaches.
Conceptual Framework and Method
Scholars have noted the connections between human rights and social work education, practice, and policy analysis.[5,6,7] Given the relevance of human rights both within social work and policy analysis, a human rights framework is appropriate and necessary for an evaluation of TANF. By using a framework for policy analysis adapted from Androff[5] and Gatenio Gabel[4] (2016), this paper will outline how key human rights indicators of human dignity, participation, nondiscrimination, equity, accountability, transparency, and adequacy can be used to analyze TANF policy. This analysis includes an assessment of TANF policy in statute at the federal level by coding laws and policy guidance using the human rights indicators, as well as comparisons of implementation decisions by states as documented by the Urban Institute’s Welfare Rules Database.
Results and Implications for Social Work Education
The analysis showed that many of the provisions in TANF policy disregard human rights norms. Eligibility rules, for example, vary widely across states, with many having strict participation requirements. The program currently serves, on average, 23% families in poverty, however this number is as low as 4% in Louisiana and as high as 70% in California.[8] The principles of equity and nondiscrimination in this case are not being met, as the state someone lives in determines the level of access to TANF benefits. TANF policy also explicitly allows states to develop rules that exclude immigrants and those moving into the state from receiving similar benefits as other state residents, again violating the principle of nondiscrimination. States are mandated to include local governments and private sector organizations in plan development, but input from TANF recipients does not need to be sought, violating participation and transparency indicators.
By using a rights-based framework for social welfare policy analysis, educators can illustrate the limits of traditional models of policy analysis. This approach also highlights the differences between a needs-based and rights-based approach, which is critical to including human rights in social work education and practice.