Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act

Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996

Long title	An Act To provide for reconciliation pursuant to section 201(a)(1) of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 1997
Acronyms (colloquial)	PRWORA
Nicknames	Welfare Reform
Enacted by	the 104th United States Congress
Citations
Public law	Pub.L. 104–193
Statutes at Large	110 Stat. 2105
Legislative history
Introduced in the House as H.R. 3734 by John Kasich (R-OH) on June 27, 1996 Committee consideration by House Budget, Senate Budget Passed the House on July 18, 1996 (256–170) Passed the Senate on July 23, 1996 (74–24, in lieu of S. 1956) Reported by the joint conference committee on July 30, 1996; agreed to by the House on July 31, 1996 (328–101) and by the Senate on August 1, 1996 (78–21) Signed into law by President Bill Clinton on August 22, 1996

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) is a United States federal law considered to be a major welfare reform. The bill was a cornerstone of the Republican Contract with America and was authored by Rep. E. Clay Shaw, Jr. (R-FL-22). President Bill Clinton signed PRWORA into law on August 22, 1996, fulfilling his 1992 campaign promise to "end welfare as we have come to know it".

PRWORA instituted Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), which became effective July 1, 1997. TANF replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program—which had been in effect since 1935—and supplanted the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training program (JOBS) of 1988. The law was heralded as a "reassertion of America's work ethic" by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, largely in response to the bill's workfare component. TANF was reauthorized in the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005.

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. 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. More permissive Northern laws were tested during the Great Migration between 1940 and 1970 in which millions of people migrated from the agricultural South to the more industrial North. Additionally, all able-bodied adults without children and two-parent families were originally disqualified from obtaining AFDC funds. Court rulings during the Civil Rights Movement struck down many of these regulations, creating new categories of people eligible for relief.

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