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Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the primary cash assistance program for families living in poverty, can play a key role in ensuring that families struggling to make ends meet have sufficient income for rent and other basic expenses such as food, clothes, transportation, and personal care products.
Studies show that income matters: financial stability gives children a better chance of growing up healthy and with the opportunity to thrive.
Recognizing the importance of income for children’s long-term growth and development — and the inadequacy of their existing TANF benefits — fourteen states plus D.C. have chosen to raise their TANF grants to families in the past few years.
Yet states need to do much more for TANF to fulfill its core purpose of helping families that struggle to meet basic needs. Until recently, most states were going in the wrong direction; many still are.
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