Why is TANF administrative total only $9.6B?

[MaxGhenis]

TANF_Administrative.csv totals $9.6B. However, HHS says the budget has been $17.3B for 2016-2018, and the updated C-TAM documentation says:

We augmented CPS TANF total benefits by $25.05 billion, and total participation by 1.81 million to hit the annual total expenditure and participations targets. In 2014, total expenditure on cash and service benefits was $29.35 billion

Offering the footnote:

Office of Family Asssitance, “Fiscal Year 2014 Financial Data,” Total Fed & State Expenditure, https://www.acf.hhs.gov/ofa/resource/tanf-financial-data-fy-2014.

Tax-Calculator CPS records total $8.8B in TANF:

recs = tc.Records.cps_constructor()
print(round((recs.s006 * recs.tanf_ben).sum() / 1e9, 1))
# 8.8

Advancing Tax-Calculator to 2018 yields an even lower TANF total of $7.8B.

Are these numbers intended to be so low? What's the source of TANF_Administrative.csv?

[MaxGhenis]

CC UBI folks in case this affects your analysis: @Amy-Xu @andersonfrailey @martinholmer @MattHJensen

[Amy-Xu]

@MaxGhenis Thanks for point this out. It appears that I modified the targets on my local computer and have not opened a PR yet for the targets.

Do you mind tag me next time you open an issue? Somehow I did't get notified for any issues you opened and many of them are very valuable. Much appreciated!

[Amy-Xu]

To answer your question, the initial version of TANF targets, currently in the repo, are for the 'Assistance' portion of benefits. Later on I added 'non-assitance' portion, both portions sum up to 29 billion for 2014. Both categories include cash and non-cash benefits. Their differences are quite definitional.

[MaxGhenis]

Do you mind tag me next time you open an issue?

Sure. Thanks for tackling this one.

[Amy-Xu]

Since this issue has been fixed, closing it now. Thanks @MaxGhenis!