Size of cash and near-cash transfer programmes (unemployment benefits, means-tested assistance, universal child benefits). Architecturally distinct from forced-saving schemes — see condition welfare_architecture.
Ease of hiring/firing, collective-bargaining scope, minimum wage rigidity, temporary/permanent contract regulation.
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 replaced the open-ended Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) entitlement with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant. Federal funds were capped at a fixed annual amount and devolved to states, which gained discretion to set eligibility, work requirements, and a five-year lifetime limit on cash assistance. The intent was to convert welfare into a work-conditioned, time-limited transfer system.
Per invariant 3, reforms are scored by what they did on each channel-separated axis, not by the party that enacted them. This fingerprint is how the policy-match engine finds historical analogues.
Explicit links are curated by the author. Inferred links are hypotheses in the library that test the same axes this policy moved — the framework's answer to "what does the data say about a policy like this?".
Ranked by axis-fingerprint overlap with this policy. Direction match bolded — those are the closest historical analogues. Shape of the match is what drives policy-outcome comparison, not the country or party label.