ABSTRACT
This chapter examines of the impact of Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). A PRWORA provision designed to improve child-support collections is the National Directory of New Hires, which started operation on October 1, 1998. The data accumulated by the National Directory allow the federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) to track absent parents across state lines. PRWORA consolidates four child-care funding programs into one Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), increases funding for child care, and allows the states the option of transferring funds from the Temporary Assistance to Needy Children (TANF) block grant to CCDF. One last major program that assists some TANF recipients and leavers is the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. In 1993 the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) rolls contained 14.2 million recipients, or 4.5 percent of the population. Many states have separated child-support enforcement (CSE) from the primary state child welfare agency.
