Aid to Families with Dependent Children (“AFDC”) was a federal assistance program tied to the Social Security Act of 1935 (1935). AFDC emerged from the Aid to Dependent Children (“ADC”) program that was part of the original 1935 social security legislation that served as the cornerstone of the “New Deal.” Like AFDC, ADC was administered by the United States Department of Health and Human Services and made federal matching funds available to states that created programs to aid children with a dead, disabled, or absent parent. In 1968, the ADC program was renamed AFDC, with the words “families with” added partly because of concern that the ADC program had discouraged marriage. AFDC eventually became the major program that provided financial assistance to children whose families had low or no income (see Office of Human Services Policy 2010). Although ADC had been a minor part of federal social security legislation, the program became more prominent and more controversial as it became...
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Levesque, R.J.R. (2011). Aid to Families with Dependent Children. In: Levesque, R.J.R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Adolescence. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1695-2_695
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