Welfare Reform, Child Care Costs, and Taxes: Delivering Increased Work-Related Child Care Benefits to Low-Income Families

Recent welfare reform proposals prompt a closer look at work-related child care assistance available to low-income families. The proposals considered by Congress during the past eighteen months would impose additional mandatory work requirements, either by making existing federal provisions more restrictive or by giving the states increased flexibility to impose such restrictions themselves. Although work requirements are not new, the reform proposals place an increased emphasis on mandatory wage work for mothers with young children.