Welfare Eligibility Research Articles

Immigrants' TANF Eligibility, 1996–2003: What Explains the New Across-State Inequalities?

Why did some states adopt stringent TANF-eligibility policies toward immigrants, while others implemented more lenient rules throughout the post-1996 welfare reform period? We use immigrant-specific welfare rule measures to examine predominant theoretical frameworks for understanding state stringency in welfare policy. Analysis, utilizing a simultaneous equations modeling (SEM) strategy, uses annual data for all states. Results show consistent support for the median voter (primarily, the percent of liberal voters) theoretical explanation for less stringent state welfare eligibility rules regarding immigrants. While the size of the Social-Security-recipient population (tax capacity indicator) and perhaps unacceptable reproductive behavior (teen birth rate) relate to more stringent rules, key state economic and fiscal characteristics (i.e., per capita welfare expenditures, per capita personal income) explain less stringent TANF eligibility rules. Importantly recent immigrant population concentration patterns (in new and traditional destination states) add to the theoretical explanation of less stringent state TANF immigrant eligibility policies.

Immigration and the Evolving American Welfare State: Examining Policies in the U.S. States

The inclusion of racial/ethnic minorities is often considered an important factor leading to a relatively limited American welfare system. However, given the federal nature of welfare eligibility rules and the states' role in determining benefit levels, few studies explicitly link questions of inclusion and benefit levels when explaining the evolution of American welfare policy. This study examines the relationship between inclusion and benefit levels by analyzing state policies related to the welfare reforms of 1996 which allowed states to decide if recent immigrants would be included in welfare benefits, and subsequently the extent to which this decision affected overall benefit levels offered by states under TANF. The results suggest that states' decisions regarding inclusion subsequently affect benefit levels, with the direction of these relationships most closely reflecting the erosion model's prediction of broader eligibility associated with lower benefit levels.

Sins of Omission and Commission

The article addresses a hypothetical dilemma confronted by an evaluator of a transition from welfare program regarding inclusion of a small immigrant/language minority group in the study. The article advocates for inclusion of diverse groups. Three important aspects of diversity are discussed that have particular relevance to transition from welfare for immigrants and refuges: legal status, the relative size and concentration of the ethnic/language community, and the specific cultural and historical circumstances. Legal status is a factor that affects eligibility for welfare and incentives for transitioning to work. Smaller groups may be particularly important to include because their access to culturally sensitive resources may be especially limited. Historical circumstances in the country of origin shape the attitudes of an immigrant or refugee group toward use of government aid. The ethical dilemma is discussed in relation to the AEA’s Guiding Principles for Evaluators of Diversity, Competence, and Honesty and Integrity.

For Love or Money? Welfare Reform and Immigrant Naturalization

The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 generally restricted immigrants' eligibility for welfare to those who had naturalized. By increasing the salience of naturalization, the law provides a unique opportunity to examine how social and economic contexts of reception influence immigrants' pursuit of citizenship. This paper summarizes instrumental-legal (IL) and social-contextual (SC) theoretical perspectives on the foundations of citizenship and develops hypotheses on how social and economic contexts of immigrant reception after welfare reform influence naturalization behavior. Using General Social Survey (GSS) data and longitudinal data from the Survey of Program Dynamics (SPD) for 1988–2002, the research finds that hypotheses about the influence of the social context of reception, as reflected in state-level favorability of attitudes toward immigrants, are most consistently supported in the data. The results hold important implications for both theories of immigrant incorporation and ideas about what constitutes the most effective policy instruments to enhance the social and economic status of immigrants.

Involvement in the Child Welfare System Among Mothers With Serious Mental Illness

Involvement in the Child Welfare System Among Mothers With Serious Mental Illness

Voter Registration Requirements, Voter Turnout, and Welfare Eligibility Policy: Class Bias Matters

AbstractThe 1990s saw some of the most dramatic changes in the American social welfare system in recent decades at both the national and state levels. In particular, states were granted, and took advantage of, much wider latitude in deciding who is eligible to receive welfare benefits. To what extent did the composition of a state's electorate influence the restrictiveness of the welfare eligibility requirements it adopted at this time? We find that in states where lower-class voter turnout was comparable to that of the upper class, lawmakers were less likely to pass restrictive welfare eligibility rules. We also find that electorates in states with restrictive voter registration laws are much more likely to be biased toward upper-class turnout. Thus, lower-class voter mobilization can affect the ability of the disadvantaged to achieve policies consistent with their interests, but state voter registration laws pose a substantial barrier to such mobilization.

Der Einfluss der Agenda 2010 auf die Arbeitslosigkeitsdauer

Abstract This paper examines the impacts on reservation wages of unemployed persons and on transition in employment due to the reform of the unemployment insurance system in Germany in the course of the Agenda 2010. An dynamic search-model is developed, on which reservation wages are simulated for different groups of unemployed. Afterwards, increases in the transition rates in employment are forecasted due to the reductions in reservation wages. It is shown that the reform of the unemployment transfer payments mainly affect unemployed persons with a high income before unemployment. For these persons the transition rates in employment are increased by 5% to 9% if they are eligible for social welfare. For unemployed persons without eligibility for social welfare the transition rates in employment are increased by 9% to 22%.

Conflicts and Trade‐Offs due to Alcohol and Drugs: Clients’ Accounts of Leaving Welfare

In this article, we explore how alcohol and drugs enter into the lives of welfare clients, affecting the ways by which they leave welfare. Our analysis draws on clients’ narrative accounts of circumstances surrounding their welfare exits. We find that substance abuse by clients or by those close to them can interfere with individual functioning and shape clients’ interactions with social networks and public agencies. This, in turn, may result in conflicts and trade‐offs that bear directly on welfare eligibility. Our findings suggest the need for welfare approaches that address the complexity of substance abuse problems.

Welfare Reform: How Do We Measure Success?

▪ Abstract This paper evaluates a burgeoning literature on the effects of the 1996 welfare reform bill. Our goal is to shift the debate from the current preoccupation with declining caseloads to one focused on the social and economic well-being of fragile families, single mothers, and children. The welfare reform literature reveals many positive changes: reduced poverty rates, lower out-of-wedlock childbearing, greater family stability, and little indication of more spouse abuse or child neglect. But it is too early to claim success and many questions remain unanswered. Poverty remains high among single mothers and their children; welfare recipients experience serious barriers to stable employment; and poor women and children face an uncertain economic and social future as welfare eligibility is exhausted and the economy wanes. With the welfare debate shifting to family and child well-being, sociology has an important policy role to play as the next phase of welfare reform begins after the 2002 reauthorization.

Extensive or Intensive Generosity? The Price and Income Effects of Federal Grants

Knowing the responsiveness of state spending to federal subsidies along different dimensions allows for the optimal design of joint federal-state programs. Welfare is an important case in point: states have the ability to choose both the extent of welfare eligibility and the intensity of benefits provided through the program. This paper estimates the sensitivity of state spending to separate federal subsidies for increasing benefits and for increasing recipients. Because the federal match rate schedule changed several times during the early years that I study, I am able to estimate elasticities in a way that is not biased by the endogenous relationship between income, spending, and federal contributions. I find that state behavior is quite sensitive to these federal subsidies (and much more sensitive than a simple OLS regression would imply). A 10% increase in the cost of benefits causes a 3.8% decrease in benefit amounts, whereas a 10% increase in the cost of recipients causes a 2.8% decrease in the numb...

Estimating Welfare Effects Consistent with Forward-Looking Behavior. Part I: Lessons from a Simulation Exercise

There is an extensive literature in economics that seeks to determine the quantitative impact of welfare benefits on female labor supply and the propensity of women to participate in the welfare system. A growing literature also examines the impact of welfare generosity on fertility and marriage - behaviors that influence welfare eligibility and the level of benefits. Most of the studies adopt a static choice framework, albeit not always explicitly, to motivate their empirical specifications. However, the behaviors that are presumably affected by the welfare system (fertility, marriage, work, school) clearly have both immediate and long-term consequences. If potential welfare recipients are forward-looking, they will consider these long term consequences when making current decisions. In this paper, we investigate the implications of the existence of forward-looking behavior for empirical work that seeks to determine the effect of welfare benefits on behavior.

Grandma's Babies: The Problem of Welfare Eligibility for Children Raised by Relatives

Grandma's Babies: The Problem of Welfare Eligibility for Children Raised by Relatives

States Rights, Women's Obligations

Abstract This abstract asks how the demise of the federal “entitlement” to welfare will affect how low-income single mothers will be governed. Historical-institutional analysis is used to predict how the states, given their regained authority, are likely to define eligibility and procedural rules for welfare. These expectations are tested by analyzing the new state plans for the administration of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families block grant program. Indices of eligibility rules and procedural rules are created and combined in a typology that depicts the new varieties of welfare governance planned by the states. The central argument is that as historical precedents would imply, the decentralization of authority for welfare is promoting the development of forms of welfare governance that vary dramatically from state to state, and which tend, predominantly, toward restrictive and coercive forms of rule. These developments mean that the obligations of poor women are being emphasized over their acces...

SSI Eligibility and Participation among Elderly Naturalized Citizens and Noncitizens

This article compares patterns and determinants of welfare eligibility and participation among naturalized citizens and noncitizens. Using the 1990 Public Use Microdata Sample, the research applies mutlilevel modeling and decomposition techniques to determine whether differences between naturalized and noncitizens in socioeconomic and demographic characteristics and the community-level structural environment can explain the naturalized/noncitizen welfare differential or whether the differences in welfare recipiency are a result of patterns of behavior or attitudes on the part of noncitizens that promote or lead to welfare recipiency. One quarter of elderly noncitizens versus 9% of naturalized citizens reported receiving SSI benefits in 1989. The primary reason for this difference is that noncitizens are more likely to be poor enough to qualify for benefits, but some of the explanation arises from the fact that eligible noncitizens are more likely to participate in SSI. In turn, elderly noncitizens are more likely to be poor and more likely to participate because of their disadvantaged economic and human capital profiles and poor returns to whatever human capital assets they do possess. The pattern of results provides scant evidence that elderly noncitizens exhibit tendencies, behaviors, or adjustment strategies that lead to high levels of welfare dependency, although some noncitizen subgroups may exhibit such tendencies.

Annual Report on Access to and Utilization of Health Care for Children and Youth in the United States–1999

The dynamics of health care delivery for children and adolescents have greatly evolved over the last 5 years. The growth of managed care has been especially rapid, and has coincided with other fundamental changes—declines in private coverage, growth of Medicaid, welfare reform, and the creation of the state Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP).1 Over the past 10 years, the number of children covered through employer-sponsored plans and other private plans has dropped.2 During this same period, changes to Medicaid have begun to de-couple eligibility from welfare eligibility, theoretically enabling states to expand coverage. For children, this movement from private to public coverage has accelerated the movement to managed care systems. Between 1991 and 1997, Medicaid enrollment in managed care plans increased from 9.5% to 47.8% of total Medicaid enrollment.3 Recent estimates suggest that over half of these Medicaid managed care enrollees are children.4 However, little is known about the impact of these trends on children's access to and use of services, let alone the quality and outcomes of that care. This report is the first in what is anticipated to be an annual series of reports on access to and use of health care services by America's children and youth. The report capitalizes on the existence of 2 national datasets, the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) and the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), which have not been widely used by the child health services research community. As background to these new sources of data, we have provided a detailed description of the datasets, and review some of the fundamental tabulations. In future years, as more data are accumulated, these reports will focus on delineation of key trends and analyses addressing policy issues. ### MEPS The MEPS is conducted to provide nationally representative estimates of health care use, …

Drug Use Among Welfare Recipients in the United States

This study examined the prevalence of drug use in a nationally representative sample of 1989 recipients and 6840 nonrecipients of four welfare programs. Data from the 1995 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA) were analyzed using the conditional form of multiple logistic regression with matching of respondents on neighborhood of residence. Weighted proportions and variances accounting for the complex sample design of the NHSDA survey were estimated using the Taylor series linearization method. The results indicate that drug use is 50% more common in households with welfare recipients than in nonwelfare households. Programs making welfare eligibility contingent on the recipient working toward a drug-free lifestyle are worth examining, although a vigilant eye must be kept on the potential unintended consequences.

He Said, She Said: The Role of Gossip in Determining Single Mothers' Eligibility for Welfare

Gossip has long been one of the most dismissed fotms of communication. Since the 1920s, nonetheless, some social scientists have attempted to understand gossip and its social utility. These scholars (be they anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, linguists, historians, or feminists) have argued that gossip plays a significant role in a number of both premodern and modern communities. However, despite a growing body of work that examines gossip in the private sphere, there has been almost no discussion of the role of gossip in public policy or, more specifically, in welfare state administration. This article will attempt to rectify that omission by providing evidence of how state administrators in one jurisdiction in two historical periods have utilized gossip to help determine which poor single mothers should receive welfare. I argue that this is not merely a custom of early administrators during the formative years of the welfare state but, rather, that the contemporary welfare state apparatus accommodates, and even encourages, the use of gossip in present-day welfare administration.

Hmong on the Move: Understanding Secondary Migration

Between the time of first arrival of the Hmong refugees in 1975 and the mid-1990s, there has been much geographic movement of these new Americans. An initial pattern of Hmong residential dispersal throughout the American states has gradually transformed into a predominantly tri-state concentration (California, Wisconsin, and Minnesota). This highly distinctive resettlement pattern is the result of delicately balancing the most essential substance of Hmong tradition with pragmatic considerations such as job prospects (especially farming work), access to language and job training programs, extended family and clan obligations, changing federal policies for Refugee Cash Assistance (RCA), changing welfare eligibility regulations between the states (especially as it relates to AFDC-UP), climate and topographical considerations, and the like.

The Privacy Problem

PRIVACY IN THE NASCENT INFORMATION AGE is a contentious issue. Technology makes it so easy to comb databases for credit reports, welfare eligibility, lists of groceries bought, or videotapes rented. The more numerous and varied the details of our lives that go on-line, the greater grow the risks of invasion of our privacy. Nor is the trend likely to change, for the future can be expected to include still more extensive use of electronic medical records, video conferences, surveillance cameras with ID-matching software, and smart highways with potential to track individual cars. Granted, the invaders of personal privacy often have legitimate business and law enforcement concerns. For instance, monitoring someone's Web-browsing habits portrays (or betrays) a set of personal preferences for marketing purposes with far greater intimacy than can demographic-group research. Individuals might truly benefit from tailored product matching. Similarly, if personal medical data were aggregated and research showed certain participants to be vulnerable to disease, they would benefit from being contacted about the danger. And what if law enforcement groups could gather and match faces of suspects as they now do with fingerprint databases?

The Effect of Population Density on Welfare Participation

The Effect of Population Density on Welfare Participation