The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 allowed states to impose sanctions, that is, to revoke cash assistance for nonpregnant women on welfare as punishment for noncompliance with the new work requirements. In addition, the law called for women's benefits from Temporary Assistance for Needy Family benefits to be terminated after 5 years. This article, which reports on an ethnographic study of 29 women in two Philadelphia neighborhoods during an 18-month period, illuminates the women's struggles with the receipt of welfare and a new law that compelled them to find work, even when it meant earning wages that were below the poverty level. It examines how the women attempted to achieve agency after they were sanctioned or had their benefits terminated.
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