PARTICIPATION AND MANDATES: States have made large strides in increasing the percentage of welfare recipients who are working or participating in welfare-to-work activities, but it would be difficult for most states to meet even the original participation rates required under TANF.

Like its predecessors dating back to 1971, TANF established a quid pro quo whereby receipt of welfare was predicated on participation in employment preparation activities or work itself. In each state, 50 percent of the single-parent caseload and 90 percent of the two-parent caseload had to be working or participating in approved activities such as job search or short-term vocational training for at least 30 hours per week. Failure on the part of a state to meet this requirement would result in reduction of its TANF block grant. Most knowledgeable observers thought that no state would be able to meet the new participation standard, yet all the states did so. How did they manage this? Under the 1996 law, a state's participation requirement is reduced by a percentage point for every percentage point reduction in its welfare caseload relative to the 1995 level. With caseload declines of 50 percent or more, most states' effective participation standard has been at or near zero for some time.

Under TANF, recipients who fail to comply with participation and other requirements may be "sanctioned," that is, lose some or all of their welfare grant. But the new law went further than earlier laws. By eliminating exemptions for parents with young children, it effectively extended the mandate to the entire welfare caseload, and it freed states to impose more severe penalties for noncompliance. Thirty-six states currently cut off the entire family's grant (a "full-family sanction") when the parent does not meet the obligation to participate. According to a General Accounting Office study, more than 100,000 families nationally were in sanction status in any given month, and possibly as many as 750,000 people have been sanctioned since TANF was implemented.

Following TANF's enactment, most states devoted additional resources to services, monitoring, and case management activities and engaged a wider range of recipients in work-related activities than ever before. Nonetheless, if caseload reductions had not occurred, few states would have been able to meet simultaneously the hours requirement and the participation rate established in TANF.  More However much effort states invest, achieving high rates of participation in program services will be a challenge because a significant percentage of recipients will be unable to participate in any given period. Programs must seek to engage almost everyone targeted by a mandate to reach the required participation level.  More Programs that actively enforced mandates by reducing the welfare grants of those who did not participate produced higher participation rates than did low enforcement programs. Beyond a threshold level, however, increases in sanctioning rates were not associated with higher participation rates.  More