The Diffusion of Successful TANF Policies

This paper uses a dyad-year event history analysis to provide a preliminary exploration of welfare policy diffusion across the states between 1997 and 2002. Rather than based on diffusion across geographic neighbors, policies spread to states with similar political leanings and similar budgetary constraints. More importantly, however, our results show that policies found to be successful in moving recipients into the workforce, and ultimately in reducing the number of welfare recipients, were more likely to be emulated by other states. Moreover, not all states responded equally to these diffusion considerations. States facing tighter budgets were more likely to seek out successful policies to alleviate their financial difficulties. Conservative-leaning states were more likely to emulate policies that successfully moved recipients from welfare to work. States with larger minority populations on welfare were more likely to adopt policies designed to move recipients into the workforce. But policies that effectively moved whites off of welfare were much more likely to be emulated than were those that moved blacks off welfare. * Results are preliminary. Please do not cite without permission of authors. Please send questions and comments to