The Effects of Separation of Services and Income Maintenance on AFDC Recipients

Abstract

In recent years the delivery of social services in public welfare agencies has been separated from income maintenance responsibilities. The change has received support from many sources including social workers. However, no systematic effort has been made to ascertain welfare recipients' responses to separation. This article reports on a field experiment intended to examine some of these responses. The experimental results suggest that the preseparation form of social service delivery leads to greater recipient demand for and greater satisfaction with social services. Some implications of these results for social policy formation are discussed.