CalWORKs provides cash aid to parents, as well as a variety of services intended to help them find and prepare for employment.
Of all welfare programs in the state, only CalFresh and earned income tax credits (the federal EITC and the new CalEITC) are responsible for larger reductions (2 percentage points each).
As far as can be determined from Census (CPS) data, CalWORKs achieves similar effects for low-income families as programs in comparable states.
[3] Looking beyond this binary in-or-out of poverty type of effect, CalWORKs' welfare-to-work nature is important for understanding how it affects Californians participating in it.
Conditioning the provision of welfare benefits on work requirements increases the burdens on families trying not to 'fall through the cracks' between safety net programs.
Workfare policies also add burdens to those who do receive aid, which again are unintentional in some cases, such as parents left unemployed by a contraction in the labor market being required to apply for weekly quotas of (scarcely available) jobs or attend job-readiness classes.
In short, unemployed parents in search of jobs are often able to gain employment through CalWORKs, but that does not translate directly to earning sufficient income to meet their family's needs.
[9] While these requirements for participants were stricter, TANF did give more freedom to states to design their implementations of the program than they had with the AFDC.
[10] The California Legislature initially created CalWORKs to be more generous than many other states' TANF implementations, but has since reformed it to be generally more austere.
[9] Although states have broad freedom in the design and implementation of their TANF programs, they must meet certain requirements to receive Federal funds.
After 7 years, the employment rates and average wages were somewhat higher for AFDC recipients who had been placed in the reduced-benefit program than in the control group.
[10] A key way the Federal government exerts its influence is by threatening a reduction in funding unless at least 50% of families receiving monthly payments meet work or job training requirements.