Final

Issued by: Administration for Children and Families (ACF)

Issue Date: October 19, 2009

TO:

State agencies administering the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Program and other interested parties.

SUBJECT:

SAS Programs to calculate the monthly work participation rates from the State’s quarterly transmission files for FY 2009

BACKGROUND:

Section 407 of the Social Security Act (the Act) requires a State operating a TANF program to meet minimum annual work participation rate standards.  The Act specifies separate minimum work participation rates for all families and two-parent families for a State. 

The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA) revised the work participation  rates in section 407 of the Act to include not just families receiving TANF assistance but also families receiving assistance in separate State programs for which the State claims MOE expenditures (SSP-MOE programs) in the official overall and two-parent work participation rates.

To achieve these annual work participation rate standards, State should monitor their work participation rates on a monthly basis.  It is helpful for States to know in detail how the Department calculates their monthly work participation rates and how the Department determines data inconsistencies and erroneous data used in this process.  It is for these reasons that we are making the SAS code available to the States.

CONTENT:

This memorandum informs States that they can download from our website the Statistical Analysis System (SAS) programs and documentation files that will enable a State to calculate its monthly work participation rates from its quarterly transmission files. 

The calculation used in the SAS code is the same as used by the Department to calculate the State’s official monthly work participation rates.  The official, annual work participation rate is a simple average of the twelve monthly work participation rates. 

The documentation file, TRANS_WPR_README.DOC, describes the system requirements for running the SAS-PC programs, the instructions for setting up the files and folders that the programs use and the instructions for running the programs. 
There are two SAS programs, TRANS_TANWPRP1.SAS and TRANS_TANWPRP2.SAS, that generate the work participation rates and related files for the State TANF program.  There are two SAS programs, TRANS_SSPWPRP1.SAS and TRANS_SSPWPRP2.SAS, that generate the work participation rates and related files for separate State programs for which the State claims MOE expenditures.  There is one SAS program, TRANS_CMBWPR.SAS, that generates the combined work participation rates.

The TRANS_TANWPRP1.SAS program reads the quarterly TANF transmission file for active cases, the quarterly TANF weight file, writes out a monthly file of counters for active TANF cases, a monthly TANF error flag file, and then sums and weights the data and writes out a monthly TANF summed weighted SAS dataset.  The TRANS_SSPWPRP1.SAS program does the same for the SSP-MOE data. 

TheTRANS_TANWPRP2.SAS program reads the three monthly TANF summed and weight files, calculates the monthly TANF work participation rates (including any adjustments for exceeding the thirty percent limit), and writes out two files.  The first file is a text file with the TANF summary data for the work participation rates and the second file is a text file with the TANF work participation rates.  The TRANS_SSPWPRP2.SAS program does the same for the separate State programs and the TRANS_CMBWPR.SAS program calculates the combined work participation rates.

FILES to DOWNLOAD:

One documentation file (TRANS_WPR_README) and five SAS program zip files

INQUIRIES:

Please direct any inquiries to the TANF Program Manager in your Region.

 

/s/

Ann H. Barbagallo
Office of Family Assistance

DISCLAIMER: The contents of this database lack the force and effect of law, except as authorized by law (including Medicare Advantage Rate Announcements and Advance Notices) or as specifically incorporated into a contract. The Department may not cite, use, or rely on any guidance that is not posted on the guidance repository, except to establish historical facts.