The Tennessee Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Opportunity Act funds seven grantees to provide services to families with low income, each aimed at improving education, health, and economic outcomes for adults and children. This baseline report provides information on the circumstances of Tennessee families to support the evaluation of the TANF Opportunity Act pilot programs. This report captures the demographic and economic context within which the seven pilot programs are operating as of the start of the programs’ implementation. The context described includes demographic information, income measures and poverty rates, employment and education data, safety net program caseloads, and health information. The data presented in this baseline report will also serve as a starting point for a data dashboard tracking changes during the pilots.

Key Findings

• Tennessee had a higher percentage of white non-Hispanic (73 percent) and Black non-Hispanic people (16 percent) than the nation as a whole (59 percent and 12 percent, respectively) between 2017 and 2021.
• The median household income in Tennessee was $58,516 between 2017 and 2021, compared with $69,021 nationally.
• In Tennessee, 13.8 percent of people had incomes below the official poverty threshold in 2019, whereas 12.3 percent of people experienced poverty nationally.
• The annual average unemployment rate in Tennessee was 4.3 percent in 2021, compared with 5.3 percent nationally.
• Approximately 807,000 people received benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in Tennessee in September 2022, about 13 percent of the population.
• About 28,000 people received TANF benefits in Tennessee in June 2022, about 0.4 percent of the population.
• In 2019, about 16 percent of children in Tennessee experienced food insecurity, compared with 15 percent nationally.
• In Tennessee, the percentage of people without any health insurance coverage between 2017 and 2021 was comparable with the national share.