increasing the number of children below 200 percent of poverty who reside in married-couple families (Nathan & Gais, 1999). This measure is based on the theory that children in single-parent homes are at greater risk than those in two-parent families and the best solution is marriage. In short, the federal government is rewarding states for encouraging marriage, a very personal decision. How do states measure the results of having more couples getting married? Over the past five years, the federal government has also found it difficult to measure improvement in states. Currently, success is based in terms of job entry rate or increases over time in job entry rate, retention rate, and earnings gain. States may use quarterly unemployment insurance wage records, surveys, administrative records, or a combination of those data sources. States are given wide latitude in the sources of information they report. Also, to further distort the findings, there is no baseline data with which to make comparisons (Danziger, 2000). Whose interests are best served by the current welfare requirements? TANF encourages states to provide assistance to those welfare recipients who are most likely to succeed at employment, ignoring individuals who are harder to place. In order to show increases in employment and wage rates, the most attention is given to people who are employable over those people with the greatest barriers to employment-those who are disabled themselves or are caretakers for disabled children, older people, people who live in inner cities or rural areas where it is difficult to find any work or there is limited transportation to jobs, people who have limited education, are homeless, or have other barriers to getting a job, keeping a job, and earning higher wages. These people are living in the highest levels of poverty; they need the most help (Nathan & Gais, 1999). But, to keep the numbers up, and show success in the program, thes...
