AFDC caseloads increased dramatically from the 1930s to the 1960s as restrictions on the availability of cash support to poor families (especially single-parent, female-headed households) were reduced.

[1] Under the Social Security Act of 1935, federal funds only covered part of relief costs, providing an incentive for localities to make welfare difficult to obtain.

In lobbying the federal government to grant states wider latitude for implementing welfare, Thompson wanted a system where "pregnant teen-aged girls from Milwaukee, no matter what their background is or where they live, can pursue careers and chase their dreams.

[12] Some states struggled to help TANF applicants find jobs, noted Peter Edelman, the director of the Georgetown Center on Poverty, Inequality and Public Policy.

[13] The change was questioned by Republicans including Dave Camp, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and Orrin Hatch, who expressed concern that the memo would remove the main focus of PRWORA.

Gingrich cited his volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity as an example of where he observed that it was more rewarding for people to be actively involved in improving their lives—by building their own homes—than by receiving welfare payments from the government.

It disallowed those with federal or state felony drug convictions from receiving benefits from Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and TANF for life.

With a few exceptions, PRWORA excluded people in both categories from eligibility for many benefits: TANF, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Medicaid, and State Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

For instance, race has a strong negative correlation for TANF assistance granted to immigrants, as states with large African American populations were more likely to correspond with excluding lawful permanent residents from the program.

[43] The last major reform effort of PRWORA was in 2002 when the Senate Finance Committee approved a bill to reauthorize legislation to restore some of the benefits stripped by the act.

According to census data from 1995, one year before PWORWA was enacted, found that "11 million children under age 6 have mothers who work outside the home and thus make use of some form of child care.

A 2017 study in the American Economic Review by Crystal S. Yang examined the effects of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act's ban on welfare benefits and food stamps to individuals convicted of felony drug offenses.

Some labor economists argue that the continuing decline in AFDC/TANF enrollment was not due to improved standard of living but offset by an exponential growth in the Earned Income Tax Credit, which by 2012 was the largest cash-benefit entitlement program in the United States.

"[59] Barbara Ehrenreich, a feminist political activist, has said that the bill was motivated by racism and misogyny, using stereotypes of lazy, overweight, slovenly, sexually indulgent and "endlessly fecund" African-American welfare recipients, and assumed that out-of-wedlock births were "illegitimate" and that only a male could confer respectability on a child.

[60][61] Three assistant secretaries at the Department of Health and Human Services, Mary Jo Bane, Peter B. Edelman, and Wendell E. Primus, resigned to protest the law.

[63][64] Welfare reform efforts such as PRWORA have been criticized for focusing almost exclusively on individual failure and irresponsibility, especially among people of color, as factors leading to poverty.

[59] She asserts that welfare systems, including PRWORA, were not made for women, because they have been created based on the male Breadwinner model, which believes that people are poor because they are jobless and the solution is to give them jobs.

[59] Gwendolyn Mink, an Associate Professor of Politics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has criticized TANF for using marriage as a means of "privatizing poverty, reaffirming patriarchy, and spotlighting women of color as moral failures.

[65] According to a study by the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence, it was found that "over half of the women receiving welfare said they had experienced physical abuse by an intimate male partner at some point during their adult lives.

[75] It is argued that this has resulted in states making abortions more inaccessible and legally punishing childbearing by not granting more assistance to families even after the number of children increases.

Susan L. Thomas has pointed out the bill fails to prove enough governmental interest warrants its child exclusionary policy and attempts to conserve money through the penalization of women who exercise their constitutional reproductive rights.

[81] A study from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities stated that cutting access to welfare through the PRWORA was "a major factor in the lack of progress in reducing poverty among people in working single-mother families after 1995".

[59][83] A study conducted by economists at Rutgers University found that states with stricter limits on receiving benefits before one is required to find work cause more single mothers to become disconnected.

[84] In its description of the "Final Rule" provision, the Department of Health and Human Services writes that, "In 1992, only 54 percent of single-parent families with children had a child support order established and, of that number, only about one-half received the full amount due.

This manifests in regulations that:[59] Diana Spatz, executive director of Lifetime, a statewide organization of low-income parents in California, advocates for the repeal of PRWORA because it prevents a woman from doing what she did prior to its passage: earn her bachelor's degree while supported by welfare.

[88] By creating time limits that force them into working without finishing a degree, Johnson says African American single mothers are left unable to better themselves through education.

With education having such a strong correlation to higher wages, she considers it crucial that welfare policies allow for mothers to attend college in order to lift themselves out of poverty.

Another criticism placed on PRWORA by some scholars is that its transition to work provisions negatively affect the ability of low-income mothers enrolled in the program to find a job.

Single mothers enrolled in TANF tend to have lower rates of literacy, and therefore finding employment that within the time frame of the "workfare" component becomes more difficult, or leads to underemployment.

Although the incentivization of financial independence is a goal for both recipients and providers, many TANF enrollees feel disincentivized from finding paid work due to low pay and the instability of this transition.