When Assistance is Insufficient: Black Women’s Informal Economic Strategies Under Temporary Cash Assistance

This qualitative research project examines the financial struggles of Temporary Cash Assistance (TCA) recipients using 20 in-depth interviews and five focus groups, guided by womanist and intersectional theoretical frameworks to center lived experience, racialized gendered labor, and structural inequality. Findings reveal a consistent theme of insufficient cash assistance to sustain daily living. Participants described diverse income-supplementing strategies, including small-scale entrepreneurship such as selling food, providing hairstyling services, informal cannabis sales, and sex work. These strategies reflect both resourcefulness and structural constraint. Participants also situated these practices within longer histories of survival economies in Black communities. The study recommends policy reforms including microloans, guaranteed income supports, and expanded childcare vouchers that allow recipients to increase income without punitive benefit loss, aligning policy with lived realities.