Recent Welfare Research Articles

WELFARE REFORM: Recent Policy and Politics

ABSTRACTPublic policy research has not combined policy and political analysis as its pioneers imagined. Mostly, political scientists study just the policy process, abandoning prescriptions to policy specialists. A better approach is to combine policy and political analysis, using positions on issues to assess policymaking, and vice versa. This article illustrates that approach by applying it to recent welfare reform. I take raising work levels as the chief goal of reform and assess the Family Support Act (FSA) of 1988 and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 against it. FSA was a timid compromise that achieved little while PRWORA was a conflicted measure that achieved more, but at unnecessary risk. I also ask how the tensions between best policy and politics might be resolved. This approach makes public policy research more relevant to the real stakes in policymaking. [142 words.]

Nonparametric Estimation of Labor Supply under the Earned Income Tax Credit and Welfare Programs

This paper examines the effect of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and welfare programs on the labor supply of single mothers. The EITC consists of an earning subsidy program in the form of marginal tax credits to the working poor. The presence of different marginal tax rates at the various earning levels makes the recipients' budget constraint a non-linear function of hours worked. Correspondingly, I estimate a flexible nonparametric labor supply function, taking full account of the nonlinear budget constraint. I then simulate the impact of each program component and their combined impact on hours. Contrary to the standard assumption of constant policy effect, I show that the EITC effect is heterogenous. An expansion of the EITC increases the hours of poor single mothers whose tax credits increase with earnings, while it decreases the hours of those not so poor whose tax credits decrease with earnings. These two effects cancel out, which explains why previous studies, focusing on the average treatment effect, found that the EITC substantially increased the participation, but had little net effects on the average hours worked. I also find that the recent EITC expansion and welfare reform worked together to significantly increase the hours worked by single mothers. Moreover, despite its disincentive effect on part of the population, the EITC improved the family income for all affected groups.

Does maternal employment influence poor children’s social development?

Various initiatives over the past 40 years have aimed to strengthen children’s early learning and social development. One policy theory—manifest in recent welfare reforms—postulates that requiring single mothers to work more outside the home will advance children’s well-being. We first examine whether young children’s social development is related to maternal employment among 405 women who entered welfare-to-work programs in 1998. For girls, age 24–42 months, we found that their mother’s recent employment duration was significantly associated with a lower incidence of aggressive behavior and inattentiveness, measured by two scales from the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL 2/3). Yet these relationships with employment were weaker than more robust associations observed for proximal child-rearing practices, including the frequency of reading with the child, enforcing a regular bedtime, the propensity to spank the child, as well as levels of maternal depression. We then assess whether broader measures of the mother’s economic security help to predict these proximal determinants of development. We observed that food security and indicators of job quality consistently predicted the proximal factors. Structural equation models (SEM) provided additional evidence that these broader indicators of economic security, but not recent employment per se, operated through parenting practices and maternal depression to influence girls’ and boys’ social development. These results are consistent with recent findings from random-assignment experiments, showing that employment gains rarely affect child outcomes unless mothers’ income and broader economic security also improve.

The Effect of Initial Placement into Kinship Foster Care on Reunification from Foster Care

ABSTRACT Recent child welfare research using administrative child welfare data has discovered that children who are placed in kinship foster care are re uni fied more slowly with their biological parents than children who are placed in foster care with nonrelatives. However, no research has examined the question of whether this effeet of placement into kinship foster care on re unification rates is due to selection bias. This research addresses this question by using a bivariate probit model and finds evidence that some of the effect of placement in kinship care on re unification rates can be attributed to selection bias.

Effects of Combining Public Assistance and Employment on Mothers and Their Young Children

SUMMARY One goal of recent welfare reform legislation is to move welfare-dependent mothers with young children into the paid labor force. However, prior to the new legislation, many welfare-dependent women were already engaged in employment activities. In this paper we examine whether child or maternal well-being is influenced by a mother's strategy of combining work and public assistance receipt in the late 1980s. Measures of well-being include children's cognitive test scores and behavior problems, parenting behavior, and maternal mental health, social support, and coping strategies collected when children were 2 ½ to 3 years of age. Data from the Infant Health and Development Program (a sample of low birthweight, premature infants born in 8 sites in 1985) were used to identify low-income families (incomes under 200% of the poverty threshold; N = 525). Comparisons were made among mothers in the following groups: (a) Work Only, (b) Some Work-Some Welfare, (c) Some Work-No Welfare, (d) No Work-No Welfare, and (e) Welfare Only. Mothers in the Some Work-Some Welfare group had children with cognitive and behavioral scores similar to children whose mothers were in the Work Only group; these two groups also had similar mental health, social support, and coping scores. However, not working and receiving welfare (Welfare Only) was associated with negative cognitive and behavioral outcomes for children, with less stimulating home learning environments, lower maternal mental health, less social support, and more avoidant coping strategies. We discuss the proposition that welfare and work may be complementary rather than opposing strategies, in terms of putting together a family income package.

Poverty and the (Broken) Promise of Higher Education

In this article, Vivyan Adair argues that educators committed to fostering social and economic equity through education must challenge themselves to understand how crucial postsecondary education is to low-income single mothers, to recognize that this student population is increasingly "at risk," and to work against legislation that at best discourages, and at worst prohibits, these students from entering into and successfully completing postsecondary degree programs. Integrated into her discussion of recent welfare reform legislation are findings from her research. She presents data from interviews, in which students describe their desire to further their education and the frustrating obstacles that make this endeavor difficult and often impossible. Adair demonstrates that low-income, single-mother students experience dramatic and enduring benefits from completing college degrees, but that the opportunity and support required to do so is increasingly limited. She concludes that we must take steps toward ensuring that education remains a truly democratic project that has the potential for enacting social change and fostering economic equity. (pp. 217–239)

All under One Roof: Mixed-Status Families in an Era of Reform

In this paper we document the prevalence of mixed immigration status families and discuss some of the immigration and citizenship policies that drive their formation. Using the 1998 Current Population Survey, we find that nearly one in ten families with children is a mixed status family: that is a family in which one or both parents is a noncitizen and one or more children is a citizen. We also find that 75 percent of children in immigrant families are citizens. We identify a number of the challenges that mixed status families pose for achieving the goals of recent welfare and illegal immigration reforms.

Urban Economic Development

Connecticut's welfare system under TANF is among the nation's harshest with 21 month lifetime limits for cash assistance, a strict work-first policy, and few training options. Various ideological perspectives suggest different policies to address poverty: orthodox economic theory emphasizes human capital enhancement such as training and education; an institutionalist approach emphasizes reducing labor market barriers to equality and provision of decent, stable public service employment; the radical or Marxist lens posits that labor, including those transitioning from welfare, needs to organize for economic and political power. Recent welfare reform embodies a fourth, neoliberal perspective that stresses ‘labor force attachment’ strategies. Regardless of ideology, Connecticut's welfare policy fails both the imperatives of the state economy for better trained workers, and also the needs of those transitioning from welfare. The authors argue for more training and education options, supportive services, economic development policy that incorporates former welfare recipients, union-Louise Simmons is affiliated with University of Connecticut School of Socialization of low wage workers, and strong welfare rights organizations.

Extent of digging and its possible underlying causal factors in penned blue foxes

A recent European animal welfare recommendation stresses the importance of studying digging behaviour in farm-born blue foxes (Alopex lagopus). The current study was conducted (1) to clarify the extent of digging and (2) to evaluate factors that motivate digging. In experiment 1, six juvenile male blue foxes were housed together from August to the following June in an earthen enclosure. Experiment 2 was conducted from July to December, using ten enclosures each containing two juvenile male blue foxes. Behaviour was monitored by 24-h video recordings and visual observations. Progress of digging was also followed by making scale drawings of all digging marks on paper. As early as the first study day, clear signs of digging were observed. Digging sites were concentrated below and close to nestboxes and pen walls. Maximally about 20% of the total enclosure area was affected. The total surface area of digging sites did not increase from late summer onwards because foxes tended simultaneously to cover part of the old sites when digging new ones. Motivational tendency to dig varied with time. Digging activity decreased during autumn and almost totally ceased during winter. In May, foxes resumed digging activity. Digging motivation was evaluated by two means: (1) by analyzing digging purpose (experiments 1 and 2), and (2) by the damming-up test (experiment 1), that is, after 10 months foxes that had been exposed to the earthen floor were transferred for 12 days into wire-mesh cages with no possibility to dig in the ground. Thereafter, foxes were transferred back into the earthen enclosure to measure the rebound of digging following deprivation. Foxes were observed to dig for the following reasons: (1) to make a hole or a resting site, (2) to locate an escape route, (3) to cache food, faeces, or sticks, (4) in response to a novel object (new nestbox, replacement of nestbox), and (5) displacement without any clear goal. Daily time spent digging averaged 7 min and 17 min per fox in Exps. 1 and 2, respectively. A clear rebound effect for digging was not identified. It can be concluded that digging is a complex behavioural pattern caused by a variety of motivations that can vary over time. The present study was unable to show unambiguously that digging is an important need for farmed foxes.

Capabilities and employability of unwed mothers

In this paper we assess the economic capabilities of a sample of unwed mothers who gave birth in the spring of 1998 in hospitals that serve low-income residents in seven cities that are part of a national sampling frame. We show that recent unwed mothers who are not in a cohabiting relationship are especially vulnerable to economic hardship because they are more likely to encounter multiple barriers to employment than mothers who do cohabit with their newborn's father. However, analyses of earnings capacity suggest that most single-mother families would be poor even if the mothers worked 1500 hours per year, and near poor if they worked full-time, year round (2000 hours). Analyses of income portfolios indicate that low-income mothers are quite resourceful packaging cash and income transfers from multiple sources to meet the needs of their families. These results are discussed in the context of recent welfare reforms.

Welfare Reform and the Well‐Being of Single Female‐Headed Families: A Semi‐Parametric Analysis

Single female‐headed families with children (SFHFwC) have historically been the primary recipients of federal public cash assistance payments in the United States. Recent welfare reform initiatives established work requirements and cumulative time limits on public cash assistance payments. Three findings in this paper have significant implications for the long‐term efficacy of welfare reform initiatives. First, SFHFwC made significant and broad‐based gains in their economic well‐being from 1993 to 1999. Second, increased propensities of single mothers to leave welfare and enter the workforce from 1993 to 1999, behavior consistent with incentives created by welfare reform measures, do not account for a major portion of these observed gains. Third, improved area economic conditions and increased educational levels of single mothers account for a major share of gains in well‐being.

Social Consequences of Unemployment: an East-West Comparison

The paper compares the experience of unemployment in Britain with that in three former state socialist societies - Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, countries with relatively recent welfare systems, providing a low level of coverage for the unemployed. The analysis examines the implications of the different types of welfare regime for financial stress, for social isolation and for psychological wellbeing. While it finds that the implications of welfare arrangments depend considerably on the nature of the labour market, it concludes that the combination of very high unemployment with low welfare coverage - exemplified by the case of Bulgaria - has exceptionally high social and personal costs. There is no evidence that these are offset by the emergence of alternative welfare arrangements based on community solidarities.

Neo-liberalism, the 'third way' or what? Recent social democratic welfare policies in Denmark and the Netherlands

After the wave of conservative or neo-liberal governments in Europe in the 1980s, social democratic parties are back in government in most European countries. At the same time, with the 'third way' as its catch phrase, European social democracy seems to have regained the ideological upper hand. The questions posed in this article are, first, whether and to what extent European social democracy has, in fact, changed course and, second, what the policy content of the new course is. The article focuses on welfare state policies and offers an analysis of social democratic policies in the Netherlands and Denmark. Our main argument is that the 'third way' is more than a new slogan. A fairly coherent set of supply-side policy intentions can be identified, the core of which is found in job creation, active labor market policies, the promotion of high rates of labor market participation, macro-economic stability and wage moderation. The 'third way', understood in this sense, must be seen as a social democratic response to the economic conditions in which Keynesian demand management through fiscal stimulation is no longer possible. It is, however, more a break with the policies pursued in the 1970s than a break with basic social democratic principles of social justice.

Immigration, Migration, and State Redistributive Expenditures

The effect of immigration on state and local budgets is a frequent topic of both political and academic conversations. A controversial issue among scholars is whether or not immigration induces outmigration of low income native born residents, a population movement which would potentially have implications for the jurisdictional distribution of immigration's fiscal impact. It is hypothesized here that if interstate poverty migration occurred, it should cause fiscal spillovers by distributing some of the public sector burden of immigration from immigrant “host” states to neighboring states. This paper uses cross‐sectional state data from 1988–1995 to explore the relationship between immigration in neighbor states and state redistributive expenditures. The results suggest that there is a positive relationship between immigration to neighboring states and redistributive expenditures. While most discussion of the fiscal impact of immigration has focused on the effects on host states and localities, the implications of these findings are that there are fiscal spillovers to neighboring states, suggesting that fiscal impacts on host states have been over‐estimated and effects on neighboring states have been underestimated. Additionally, the implications of recent welfare reform, which gives states the opportunity to use citizenship as a criterion for program eligibility, are discussed.

The role of the economy and welfare policies in shaping welfare caseloads: The California experience

This longitudinal study analyzes the effect of labor market conditions and welfare policies accompanying the 1990s waivers granted by the federal government and Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-193)on California's welfare caseload. A monthly semilogarithmic rate model is constructed for analyzing and predicting the single-parent welfare caseload from January 1983 to December 1998. The idea underlying this model is that during the study period month-to-month changes in the fraction of the female population ages 15 to 44 who headed a single-parent family and who received welfare were in response to changes in welfare policies and other programmatic and economic factors. The findings suggest that the role of welfare policies in shaping the caseload was modest, whereas the role of the economy was substantial. Key words: caseload; economy; time limits; waivers; welfare reform; work incentives On April 10, 1999, President Clinton announced that since he took office, welfare caseloads consisting of families with children on welfare had fallen by 50 percent or more in 29 states and by about half nationwide. The most recent policy changes intended to reduce welfare caseloads were those under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWOA) of 1996 (P.L. 104-193). On August 22, 1996, President Clinton signed PRWOA into law. This legislation replaced the federal entitlement program of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). For the previous 60 years, the AFDC program had provided financial assistance to poor families with children who met categorical and income eligibility criteria. In 1998, in response to federal changes under PRWOA, California's AFDC program was replaced by California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs). Along with time limits, this new program implemented substantial work incentives. Before the inception of the PRWOA, a number of states, including California, were granted waivers by the federal government to experiment with a variety of innovative approaches to end welfare dependence. From 1993 to 1997, welfare caseloads decreased in these states by nearly 20 percent, the largest decline in 50 years (Martini & Wiseman, 1997). In light of the goals of the 1996 federal welfare legislation, it is particularly important to determine if, and the extent to which, federal or state policies played major roles in reducing welfare receipt in the context of improving economic conditions, including lower unemployment rates and growing numbers of jobs. California's very severe recession and subsequent vigorous recovery occurred in the midst of its waivers and CalWORKs, creating an excellent domain for teasing apart the effect of policy shifts from the economy in reducing the caseload. This study determined the extent to which earlier waivers and PRWOA as implemented by CalWORKs affected the size of the welfare caseload in California. For this investigation the largest component of the welfare caseload, the single-parent component, is considered for analysis. The AFDC-Family Groups (AFDC-FG) or CalWORKs component mainly serves single-parent families, many of whom do not have labor force experience. Understanding the role that the economy and recent welfare reform policies played in reducing the caseload after the inception of the waivers and PRWOA may foster a better design of future policies. Other research that analyzes the effect of recent welfare reform legislation on welfare caseloads is national, occurred before the implementation of PRWOA, and is in short supply. Yet, state-level rather than national-level analysis is essential because welfare policies and experiences vary drastically from state to state. Findings from the present investigation should have special value for states that were granted work-related waivers similar to the ones granted to California or to states that implemented programs resembling the CalWORKs program. …

Welfare Reform and the Changing Landscape of Substance Abuse Services for Low‐Income Women

Recent welfare reform policies could fundamentally change the nature of public-sector substance abuse services available to women. This review summarizes what is presently known about substance abuse services and women on welfare, and identifies limitations in our current knowledge about the potential effects of welfare reform. Five crucial areas are examined in which research on services has fallen short: (1) assessing the need for substance abuse services across a broad spectrum of welfare populations, (2) exploring the role that alcohol and drug problems play in welfare dependency, (3) examining how welfare programs can serve as pathways to alcohol and drug treatment, (4) evaluating the effectiveness and costs of innovative welfare-treatment programs, and (5) understanding systems-level adaptations in substance abuse services for women that result from changing welfare policies. We conclude that researchers who study services should take a broad view of these issues-one that considers the unique situation of poor women and single mothers, that views substance abuse within a work impairment or disabilities framework, and one that is attuned to future changes in the effects of welfare reform as the economy and labor markets undergo change.

The Supplemental Security Income Program and Employment for Young Adults with Disabilities

Recent welfare reform initiatives have focused on moving adults with disabilities from income maintenance programs such as Supplemental Security Income (SSI) into paid work. Young adults with disabilities are a key group for targeted reforms because of their potential for obtaining early and long-term employment. Although there is substantial research focusing on the employment characteristics of working-age adults with disabilities, little recent data describe or explain the relationship between work and SSI participation for young adults with disabilities. This study examined data from the 1994 and 1995 National Health Interview Survey on Disability Supplement (NHIS-D) to describe the employment characteristics of young adults with disabilities, ages 18 to 29 years. In addition, this study examined the extent to which sociodemographic, education, health, disability, and program participation factors were associated with employment for this population. Findings are discussed in light of current SSI and employment policies as well as recommendations for reform.

The impact of welfare reform for families with children: Evidence from New York: A report of the New York city social indicators center, Columbia university school of social work

This paper uses data from the Current Population Survey and administrative data from New York to simulate the poverty impact of the recent federal and state welfare reforms. We find that the federal welfare reforms would in the absence of additional state or local aid raise the poverty rate of families with children and the poverty gap (the amount needed to raise poor families’ incomes up to the poverty line). Although New York state and local welfare programs will offset much of this impact, we find that even with state and local aid, 16,000 families with children will move into poverty and 63,000 families with children, most of them already poor, will move into severe poverty, while the aggregate poverty gap will increase by nearly 25%.

Health Risks, Ability to Pay, and the Use of Primary Care: Is the Distribution of Service Effective and Equitable?

Background. This study clarifies the confusion about what factors are consistent predictors of primary care service use, of which preventive services are a major component. A variety of health risk, predisposing, and enabling characteristics were assessed for their association with the use of primary care. Variable selection was guided by the use of the Andersen–Newman Behavioral Model of health service utilization.Methods. The responses of 1512 residents of Oklahoma to the BRFS survey were used in this study. Both probit and logistic analyses were used to assess the use of nine preventive services and a summary index of service use.Results. The results indicate that those at greater risk of illness and least able to use finance services have the lowest rates of use among the nine preventive services individually and when combined as an index of overall primary care use.Conclusions. Problems persist with the adequate distribution of primary care among the medically vulnerable. Furthermore, recent welfare and health reforms may present added obstacles to their access to quality primary care services. The paper concludes with a discussion of policy options that may improve the effectiveness of primary care and redress inequities in the use of these services.

Educational Attainment and Sex Differentials in African American Communities

The authors review and analyze the educational progress made by African Americans, paying special attention to differences in the educational attainment of Black women and men. Increasingly, Black women comprise the majority of African Americans enrolled in college and receiving associate, bachelor's, master's, doctoral, and professional degrees. Using aggregate data, the authors explore the feasibility of various explanations both for the decline and stagnation of Black men's participation in postsecondary education and for the educational progress that Black women have made. The authors also examine the benefits African American women are purportedly receiving from their participation in college and in other postsecondary education, and they challenge those who warn of the increasing feminization of Black educational achievement. They conclude by noting the implications of the findings for various public policies, including the recent welfare reform legislation that contains regulations that restrict the access of welfare recipients to postsecondary education.