TANF Income Eligibility Thresholds and Time to Adoption from Foster Care

Background/Purpose: Moving foster children to adoption is a top child welfare priority.  This important child welfare goal is facilitated by Adoption Assistance, a monthly stipend provided to adoptive families to help defray the costs of adding a child to the family.  Prior to 2008’s Fostering Connections Act, Adoption Assistance and TANF were connected by a series of complex federal and state funding rules.  If a child’s birth parents qualified for TANF at the time the child was removed from the home, a state’s Adoption Assistance can be reimbursed through federal Title IV-E.   Because states’ rules regarding eligibility for TANF vary, the number and percentage of children who are eligible to receive federal IV-E reimbursement also vary greatly by state.  Do state TANF rules inadvertently hinder timely adoption from foster care?   This study sought to answer two research questions: (1) Are state-established TANF income eligibility limits associated with the time between termination of parental rights (TPR) and adoption?  (2) Are there threshold levels of TANF income eligibility limits that facilitate faster adoptions?

Methods: We use data from the 2004-2011 Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, inclusive of adopted children with maternal TPR dates between 10/1/2003 – 9/30/2010.  These data were supplemented with information from the Urban Institute’s Welfare Rules Databook, where we obtained the Maximum Income for Initial Eligibility for a family of 3 for years 2002-2009.  There are 296,799 records in the dataset.  We use Cox proportional hazards regression to assess the time between time of maternal TPR and adoption date, and the “risk” of adoption. 

Results:   Controlling for the child’s age at time of maternal TPR and the adoptive parent(s)’ pre-adoption relationship to the child, children whose maximum income for initial TANF eligibility for a family of 3 was in the lowest three quartiles were 12%-24% less likely to be adopted in any given week than those in the top quartile (hazard ratios of .76 to .88).  In a model accounting for unobserved state factors, children in the lowest three quartiles of income eligibility were 35-51% less likely to be adopted in any given week than those in the top quartile (hazard ratios of .49 to .65). 

Conclusions and Implications:  These results indicate that there is a threshold of TANF income eligibility that is associated with faster times to adoption from maternal TPR.  That is, in states that provide TANF benefits to families with higher incomes, and thereby enable a greater portion of children to be eligible for Adoption Assistance, children move more quickly from foster care to adoption.   Policymakers at the state and federal level may wish to consider unintended consequences of low TANF eligibility limits. When Adoption Assistance is contingent on TANF eligibility, and lower percentages of families are eligible for TANF, states may be restricting an important adoption incentive.