The Brookings Institution's Welfare Reform and Beyond Initiative was created to inform the critical policy debates surrounding the upcoming congressional reauthorization of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programme and a number of related programmes that were created or dramatically altered by the landmark 1996 welfare reform legislation. The goal of the project has been to take the large volume of existing and forthcoming research studies and shape them into a more coherent and policy-orientated whole. This collection gathers 20 essays, published between January 2001 and February 2002, that assess the record of welfare reform. They focus on issues likely to be debated before the TANF reauthorization, as well as a broader set of policy options for low-income families.