Family and Child Well-being After Welfare Reform

Douglas Besharov

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351520508
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica sociale

Since their historic high in 1994, welfare caseloads in the United States have dropped an astounding 59 percent--more than 5 million fewer families receive welfare. Family and Child Well-Being after Welfare Reform, now in paperback, explores how low-income children and their families are faring in the wake of welfare reform. Contributors to the volume include leading social researchers. Can existing surveys and other data be used to measure trends in the area? What key indicators should be tracked? What are the initial trends after welfare reform? What other information or approaches would be helpful? The book covers a broad range of topics: an update on welfare reform (Douglas J. Besharov and Peter Germanis); ongoing major research (Peter H. Rossi); material well-being, such as earnings, benefits, and consumption (Richard Bavier); family versus household (Wendy D. Manning); fatherhood, cohabitation, and marriage (Wade F. Horn); teenage sex, pregnancy, and nonmarital births (Isabel V. Sawhill); child maltreatment and foster care (Richard J. Gelles); homelessness and housing (John C. Weicher); child health and well-being (Lorraine V. Klerman); nutrition, food security, and obesity (Harold S. Beebout); crime, juvenile delinquency, and dysfunctional behavior (Lawrence W. Sherman); drug use (Peter Reuter); mothers' work and child care (Julia B. Isaacs); and the activities of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (Don Winstead and Ann McCormick). When welfare reform was first debated, many people feared that it would hurt the poor, especially children. The contributors find little evidence to suggest this has occurred. As time limits and other programmatic requirements take hold, more information will be needed to assess the condition of low-income families after welfare reform. This informative volume establishes a baseline for that assessment.

1

Introduction

Douglas J. Besharov and Peter Germanis

Between March 1994 and July 2001, welfare rolls fell an amazing 59 percent from their historic high of 5.1 million families. How much of this decline was the result of welfare reform and how much was the result of other factors, such as the strong economy? What were the effects of the decline on low-income families? About a quarter billion dollars is being spent on studies and surveys designed to answer these and other questions. Unfortunately, we are unlikely to get more than a modest amount of the information sought.

This book is titled Family and Child Well-Being after Welfare Reform, even though the common formulation is “child well-being.” The word family was added to the title in recognition of the family’s preeminent role in protecting and fostering the well-being of children and in recognition that well-functioning families are likely to be more successful in doing so.

After one chapter on welfare reform and the caseload decline and another chapter assessing the research on welfare reform’s impact, the volume reviews some of the key areas of family and child well-being: income and expenditures; cohabitation and child well-being; fatherhood, cohabitation, and marriage; teenage sex, pregnancy, and nonmarital births; child maltreatment and foster care; housing conditions and homelessness; child health; nutrition, food security, and obesity; crime and juvenile delinquency; drug use; and mothers’ work and child care.

Each chapter addresses a series of questions: Can existing surveys and other data be used to measure trends in the area? How might they be improved? What key indicators should be tracked? What are the initial trends after welfare reform? What other information or approaches would be helpful? These specific-topic chapters are followed by a description of the activities of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to monitor broadly the well-being of low-income children and their families.

The final chapter summarizes what will and will not be learned from existing studies; emphasizes the importance of high-quality, ongoing data for monitoring the well-being of low-income families; describes several options for improving selected data sources; and recommends randomized experiments to assess the impact of specific welfare reform provisions.

Welfare Reform and the Caseload Decline

The 1996 welfare reform law, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program (AFDC) with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (TANF). Between March 1994 (two years before the passage of PRWORA) and June 2001, the welfare rolls fell an amazing 59 percent from their historic high of 5.1 million families.¹ Around July of 2001, caseloads stopped declining in most states and started rising again, presumably because of the weakening economy. But, although about ten states experienced caseload increases of 10 to 20 percent in the next year, at least as of June 2002, the nationwide rise has been surprisingly modest.²

In “Welfare Reform and the Caseload Decline” (chapter 2), Douglas J. Besharov, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and a professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs, and Peter Germanis, assistant director of the university’s Welfare Reform Academy, trace what is known about the large decrease in welfare recipiency and what families are doing after they leave welfare. The authors’ main data sources are the Current Population Survey (CPS), the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), state administrative data on welfare submitted to HHS, and state “leaver studies” (see boxes 1.1 and 1.2).

Besharov and Germanis describe how a number of respected researchers have used econometric models to estimate how much of the decline was caused by welfare reform compared with other factors. That research suggests that 35 to 45 percent of the decline resulted from the strong economy, 20 to 30 percent stemmed from massive expansion in aid to the working poor, up to 5 percent came from an increase in the minimum wage, 25 to 35 percent resulted from welfare reform, and 5 to 10 percent came from the erosion in the real value of benefits. The authors express each factor as a range, to reflect the uncertainty surrounding the estimates, but they nevertheless conclude that these percentages accurately reflect the relative importance of each factor to the decline in caseloads.

Box 1.1
Multipurpose Sources of Welfare Data

The Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) is an ongoing survey of about 7,500 households (5,000 before 1999) designed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and conducted by the Census Bureau. Each family is surveyed for five consecutive quarters regarding their purchases during the previous three months. The survey also includes information on the income and demographic characteristics of participating families.

The Current Population Survey (CPS) is a monthly survey of about 60,000 households (up from 50,000 before July 2001) sponsored jointly by the Census Bureau and BLS. The data are collected by the Census Bureau. Although the main purpose of the survey is to collect data on employment-related outcomes, each March a supplement to the CPS (with a sample of 78,000 households, beginning in 2001) collects detailed information on the nation’s families, including family income, poverty status, living arrangements, and participation in government and welfare programs. Additional supplements focus on food security, fertility and marital history, and other topics.

The Decennial Census is the complete enumeration of the nation’s population, conducted by the Census Bureau every decade since 1790. The “short form” of the survey (sent to five of every six households) is used to collect information about each housing unit and basic demographic information for all household members. A subset of the population is asked more detailed questions on the “long form” (sent to one of every six households), including questions about the demographic, economic, and social circumstances of the sample and about the characteristics of the participants’ housing.

The Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) is a longitudinal survey conducted by the Census Bureau. The 1996 panel had 36,700 participating households, which are interviewed twelve times over a four-year period. The survey provides detailed information on the demographic characteristics of participating families and their income, labor force participation, participation in government and welfare programs, living arrangements, and other factors. Topical modules conducted periodically have covered issues such as child care, child support, disability, and support from nonhousehold members.

Box 1.2
State-Based Welfare Data

States are required to submit detailed administrative data to the federal government for most major programs, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), food stamps, and Medicaid. The data can include program aggregates, such as caseloads and total spending, as well as detailed information about the characteristics of public assistance recipients, including their age, sex, race or ethnicity, income, employment, and the number and characteristics of other people living in the home. The TANF Annual Report to the Congress and other HHS materials, for example, are based on state administrative data on caseload size and welfare recipient characteristics submitted by all states to HHS.

Leaver studies are state studies of families leaving welfare that are based on surveys or administrative data. They attempt to track the employment, earnings, welfare receipt, and other outcomes of families leaving welfare. The studies vary considerably in the scope and completeness of their data, the length of their follow-up, and the comprehensiveness of their questions. As a result, many analysts limit the use of such studies to those that meet certain minimum criteria. For example, the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) summarized only those studies that achieved a 70 percent response rate or included a nonresponse analysis indicating that the nonrespondents were similar to the respondents. Many of the leaver studies also examine specific issues, such as use of child care, use of health care services, and homelessness.

According to Besharov and Germanis, welfare offices have been transformed from places where mothers are signed up for benefits (with almost no questions asked beyond those concerning eligibility) to places where mothers are helped, cajoled, and pressured to get a job—or to rely on others for support. This dual approach is reflected in case outcomes: Survey research of those who have left welfare (“leavers”) suggests that only about 50 to 60 percent seem to be working regularly, often in low-paying jobs. The other 40 or 50 percent are just leaving—some to work eventually, but more immediately to move in with (or to be supported by) family, friends, or boyfriends. (Besharov and Germanis note that several studies of leavers suggest that even those who have “barriers” to employment are leaving the rolls at a high rate.) Most welfare leavers report that they are as well off or better off after leaving than while on welfare, but a significant minority report being worse off.

Besharov and Germanis point out that many nonworking mothers who have left welfare could be initiating new co-residency arrangements or falling back on preexisting ones (together with other sources of support). Many observers focus on cohabitation, but Besharov and Germanis describe a far more extensive economic and social network comprising other shared living arrangements. According to SIPP data, for example, in 1990, before the declines in welfare caseloads, 37 percent of welfare mothers lived with other adults—18 percent with their parents, 6 percent with a boyfriend, and 13 percent with others.³

When welfare reform was first debated, many people feared that it would hurt the poor, especially children. But according to Besharov and Germanis, as well as most of the other contributors to this volume, little evidence suggests that—as of now—welfare reform has caused widespread additional hardship, such as substantial decreases in incomes, increased homelessness, or more foster care placements. But, the incomes of the poorest single mothers may have declined, at least in the immediate aftermath of welfare reform. Because of various methodological problems, Besharov and Germanis conclude that substantially better data are needed to assess the situation of single mothers and their children.

Assessing Welfare Reform’s Impact

About a quarter billion dollars is being spent on studies and surveys specifically designed to monitor and evaluate “welfare reform.” Can these surveys and studies determine how much of the caseload decline was due to welfare reform? Can they determine welfare reform’s impact on low-income children and their families? If not, can they at least tell us about the well-being of children after welfare reform?

In “Assessing Welfare Reform’s Impact” (chapter 3), Peter H. Rossi, a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, describes the four major research projects assessing welfare reform, programs that account for more than half the spending in the area: the Survey of Program Dynamics (SPD), the National Survey of America’s Families (NSAF), the Project on Devolution and Urban Change (UC), and the Child Impact Waiver experiments being funded by the federal government (see box 1.3). He concludes that these studies cannot provide a reliable assessment of welfare reform’s impact on children and families because it is too late to construct a valid control or comparison group with which to measure the “counterfactual,” or what would have happened in the absence of welfare reform.

Box 1.3
Welfare Reform Evaluative Studies

The National Survey of America’s Families (NSAF), part of the Urban Institute’s Assessing the New Federalism project, is a nationwide survey of 44,000 households in 1997 and 42,000 households in 1999, with an additional survey completed in 2002. The New Federalism project is intended to provide researchers with resources to monitor and assess the consequences of program changes and fiscal developments. Thus, the NSAF captures information on the economic, health, and social well-being of children, adults under age sixty-five, and their families. Although the survey is national in scope, the focus is on thirteen states that together account for about half the nation’s population. The 1997 survey was intended to be a snapshot of family life on the eve of major policy changes, most notably welfare reform, with subsequent surveys capturing the period after welfare reform.

The Survey of Program Dynamics (SPD), conducted by the Census Bureau, is a national longitudinal survey that was authorized by the 1996 welfare reform law to evaluate the impact of welfare reform. The SPD is an extension of the 1992 and 1993 panels of the SIPP and will follow the same households for ten years, from 1992 to 2001. It collects detailed information on the socioeconomic characteristics of participating households, including family composition, program participation, and employment and earnings. Because the survey is longitudinal, researchers will be able to examine transitions on and off welfare programs. In some years, the survey includes special questions related to child and adolescent well-being. The SPD started with 50,000 households in 1992–1993 (as the SIPP), but attrition and budget restrictions have substantially reduced the sample.

The Project on Devolution and Urban Change (UC), conducted by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC), is studying the aftermath of welfare reform in four large cities (Cleveland, Los Angeles, Miami, and Philadelphia). The project has several components, including ethnographic studies in poor neighborhoods, implementation studies examining how welfare agencies implemented the new law, and studies assessing the impact of welfare reform on local social agencies and businesses. In each city, 1,000 single mothers who received AFDC in 1995 were interviewed in 1998 on such topics as their experience with welfare, their labor market participation, and the well-being of household members, especially children. The survey achieved a response rate of 79 percent. A follow-up survey of these mothers was conducted in 2002, with a response rate of 80 to 83 percent of the first-wave respondents. Since 1992, detailed administrative data covering welfare receipt and employment and earnings have also been collected.

The Child Impact Waiver Experiments are five experiments funded by HHS that began before enactment of national welfare reform to test alternatives to the old AFDC program. States were granted waivers to try such experiments only if they established rigorous, random-assignment experiments to measure the impact of their new policies. Many of the waiver projects resembled the TANF programs. HHS supported expansions of evaluations in five states (Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, and Minnesota) to include additional measures of child well-being. The studies concentrated on families with children between ages five and twelve.

Rossi cautions that none of the studies should be used to make causal statements about the impact of welfare reform on the condition o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Boxes
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Welfare Reform and the Caseload Decline
• 3 Assessing Welfare Reform’s Impact
• 4 Income and Expenditures
• 5 Cohabitation and Child Well-Being
• 6 Fatherhood, Cohabitation, and Marriage
• 7 Teenage Sex, Pregnancy, and Nonmarital Births
• 8 Child Maltreatment and Foster Care
• 9 Housing Conditions and Homelessness
• 10 Child Health
• 11 Nutrition, Food Security, and Obesity
• 12 Crime and Juvenile Delinquency
• 13 Drug Use
• 14 Mothers’ Work and Child Care
• 15 Activities of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• 16 Conclusion
• Contributors
• Index