According to a “misery index,” computed each year by the advocacy group, Legal Momentum, Vermont does a better job than most states at drawing on federal welfare dollars to support poor families. Advocates are pointing to the strong score as another argument for keeping the Reach Up program intact.
States receive a fixed grant from the federal government, known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), to operate their family welfare programs. Reach Up, Vermont’s version of the program, provides cash assistance to about 6,500 families.
Legal Momentum, a women’s rights advocacy organization founded in 1970, devised the “TANF misery index,” which it defines as the sum of the percent of poor families not receiving TANF and the percent gap between TANF benefits and the poverty level.
The index is a riff on the more traditional “misery index” in economic policy, which represents the sum of the rates of unemployment and inflation.
A state would receive the maximum index of 200 if none of its poor families received TANF benefits. In a state where all eligible families receive TANF and the benefits bring their income up to or above the federal poverty line, the index would be zero.
Vermont’s score was 135 in 2011, the most recent year for which there is available data. The median score for states was 156.
Since 1996, when the federal TANF program took effect, the national TANF misery index has risen steadily, from 93 to 145 in 2011. Most of that growth stems from an increase in the percent of poor families without TANF.
The Shumlin administration has been peddling a proposal to the Legislature that would cap the total amount of time a family can spend on Reach Up at five years. Families would be bumped from the program after three years, but they could requalify for another two non-consecutive years of benefits — the cap would impact roughly 1,200 families. Administration officials say some families need a deadline to leave the program, and they cite the fact that a number of other states have time limits in place.
But advocates say the administration’s Reach Up proposal will exacerbate poverty and cause the state’s index to creep upwards. Chris Curtis, an attorney with Vermont Legal Aid, said in a written statement that the index is “just another reason that arbitrary time limits for Vermont’s Reach Up (TANF) participants will not work. Instead, we should continue our tradition of alleviating the ‘misery index’ by investing in people and economic opportunity.”
