Editors' Summary (Editorial‪)‬

THE BROOKINGS PANEL ON Economic Activity held its seventy-seventh conference in Washington, D.C., on March 25 and 26, 2004. This issue of Brookings Papers on Economic Activity includes the papers and discussions presented at the conference. The first paper analyzes the experience of single mothers since the welfare reforms of the mid-1990s. The second paper offers a diagnosis of the persistence of poverty in sub-Saharan Africa and outlines a long-run program of assistance to promote sustained development. The third paper models the relationship between long-run demographic swings and long-run returns to equities. The fourth paper reports on a survey of Americans' opinions on, and knowledge about, economic policy issues and assesses how self-interest, political ideology, and other factors relate to those opinions. THE CHANGE IN THE political climate in the United States during the 1980s placed the nation's welfare system under increasing attack, and after caseloads began to grow rapidly in the early 1990s, recalling an earlier surge in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Democrats as well as Republicans supported reform. In 1996, with the support of President Bill Clinton, Congress passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. This legislation replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program with a new program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Since its inception as part of the Social Security Act in 1935, AFDC had been the federal government's main welfare program, providing assistance to low-income single mothers. TANF continued this assistance but mandated nationwide time limits on welfare receipt and work requirements for recipients--popular features that some states had introduced earlier under federal waivers. At the same time, the new law reduced federal control over welfare policy. Federal matching of state expenditures on AFDC was replaced with fixed block grants, and states were given considerable leeway in how the block grants were used.