November 16, 2020
The Office of Family Assistance (OFA) has published the data tables, Characteristics and Financial Circumstances of TANF Recipients for FY 2019. The Characteristics and Financial Circumstances of TANF Recipients tables provide demographic data on adults and children in TANF active families receiving cash assistance and closed cases.
Key highlights from the data show that in an average month in FY 2019:
- About 437,000 adults and 1.6 million children received TANF cash assistance.
- There were approximately 512,000 child-only families (those in which no adult received TANF cash assistance), which accounted for 55.8 percent of the total TANF caseload in an average month.
- On average, TANF recipient families received $447 in cash assistance per month.
- Over one third of adult TANF recipients (36.6 percent) had less than a high school education, 54.4 percent had completed high school (or its equivalent) but no further education, and 9.0 percent had education beyond high school.
- In an average month 26.4 percent of TANF adult recipients were employed.
National and state-level data are available, as well as data on families receiving assistance through Separate State Program (SSP)-Maintenance-of-Effort (MOE) programs. FY 2019 Characteristics and Financial Circumstances of TANF Recipients data tables can be found here: /ofa/resource/characteristics-and-financial-ci...