Date of Conferral

9-8-2025

Degree

Ph.D.

School

Public Policy and Administration

Advisor

Raj Singh

Abstract

Single mothers receiving cash welfare assistance through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, may not be prepared for economic self-sufficiency due to TANF’s primary focus on employment and limited focus on self-sufficiency barriers. Past studies have found that cash welfare assistance recipients may not become self-sufficient due to low-wage employment, limited education, and the lack of a public policy-based standardization of the concept of economic self-sufficiency. The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of single mother TANF recipients pursuing economic self-sufficiency through the lens of the capabilities approach, life chances theory, and the feminization of poverty. Rooted in the qualitative research tradition, this study employed a joint narrative inquiry-case study approach to explore the participants’ perspectives and experiences. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with nine single mother former and current TANF recipients, then organized, coded, analyzed, and evaluated via triangulation. The results were that single mother cash welfare assistance recipients’ economic self-sufficiency preparedness was informed by education, employment, financial resources management, environmental factors, economic self-sufficiency barriers, personal motivations, personal attributes, self-determination, and other considerations presented in this study. Social change implications included influencing cash welfare assistance policies that may help facilitate economic self-sufficiency in single mother cash welfare assistance recipients by addressing shortcomings of the current work-centric focus of current policies and by presenting meaningful solutions to economic self-sufficiency barriers.

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