Aid to Families with Dependent Children, often called AFDC, was a United States federal-state government program created in 1935 to provide financial help to low-income families with children. Under AFDC, states determined benefit levels and administered the program. The federal government set many of the rules for determining who qualified for benefits, and it paid about half the costs of the program.
To qualify for AFDC, a family had to have one parent who was missing, dead, or unemployed. Divorced, separated, and never-married mothers headed most AFDC families. Many families received AFDC for less than one year. But by the mid-1990’s, three-fourths of all people receiving AFDC had received it for five years or more.
In 1996, the federal government replaced AFDC with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a program that paid fixed grants to states, required that adult recipients work, and placed limits on the length of time recipients could obtain benefits. Under the new program, states received more authority to choose their own approach to assisting families.
