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This section summarizes impacts for children, using data from the Child Outcomes Study (COS) sample in three sites and from the client survey sample in all seven evaluation sites. COS data provide a rich, in-depth look at a subset of young children; child data from the client survey sample, though more limited, cover more sites and programs, provide information about a large number of children who were age 6 or over at study entry, and are available for families in four sites who had children as young as age 1 at baseline. (See Appendix C for a discussion of how the children in the control groups in this study and national samples of children compared developmentally at the two-year follow-up point.) Given, however, that many of the client survey questions applied only to school-age children, most analyses reported below narrow the client survey sample to only those who had all school-age children at study entry. (21)(Results for client survey sample members with children of all ages are shown in Appendix D.) Child impacts, as was the case with the previously discussed impacts, are measured by comparing outcomes for children of program group members with outcomes for children of control group members. Child impacts are presented for three child outcome areas: behavioral and emotional adjustment, cognitive functioning and academic achievement, and health and safety.(22)
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For focal children in the COS sample, indicators of behavioral and emotional problems included the Behavior Problems Index (BPI) and the Positive Behavior Scale/Social Competence Subscale (PBS/SCS). For each of the six COS programs, 11 outcome measures were developed from these two instruments. Two of the six programs had any impacts on focal children in this outcome area, producing a total of five impacts. (See Table 4.) Two of the five impacts were in the Grand Rapids LFA program; they were unfavorable and they related to the BPI. The three remaining impacts were in the Atlanta LFA program, and they were both favorable and unfavorable and related to the BPI and the PBS/SCS.
In the client survey sample, children's behavioral and emotional adjustment was measured by asking parents whether their children (1) had been suspended from school, (2) were receiving or requiring help for behavioral or emotional problems, or (3) were in a special class or school for such problems. Among the subgroup of families with all school-age children, for whom these measures would be directly applicable, between 22 and 35 percent (depending on the site) of the control group parents reported that at least one of their children had been suspended from school since study entry; between 16 and 45 percent (depending on the site) reported that at least one child was currently receiving or requiring help for behavioral or emotional problems; and between 6 and 17 percent (depending on the site) reported that they had a child (or children) attending a special class or school for behavioral or emotional problems. (See Table 5.) Eight of the 11 programs produced at least one impact on children in this outcome area. (See Table 6.) Three programs decreased the incidence of at least one behavioral problem, and five programs increased the frequency of at least one. Only two programs, however, had an impact on more than one of the three behavioral adjustment measures.
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For focal children in the COS sample, the Bracken Basic Concept Scale/School Readiness Composite (BBCS/SRC) was used to measure cognitive development. For each of the six COS programs, three outcome measures were developed from the BBCS/SRC scores (reflecting the average score and the distribution of scores), and one outcome measure consisted of an index of two survey questions asked of mothers about academic problems. Three of the six programs had impacts in this outcome area, and they were all in a desirable direction. (See Table 4.) The Atlanta LFA program increased the average BBCS/SRC score, increased the proportion of focal children scoring in the top quartile, and decreased the proportion scoring in the bottom quartile. The Atlanta and Grand Rapids HCD programs slightly increased the proportion of children scoring above the 75th percentile, but the mean score was unaffected.
Children's school progress was measured by asking parents whether their children (1) had repeated a grade or (2) were attending a class for learning problems. Between 8 and 23 percent (depending on the site) of control group families with all school-age children reported that at least one of their children had repeated a grade in school during the two-year follow-up period; between 14 and 33 percent reported that any of their children were currently attending a special class for learning problems. (See Table 5.) For program group families with all school-age children, two programs — Riverside LFA and Columbus Integrated — had any impacts in this area; again, these were in a desirable direction. (See Table 6.)
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In the area of health and safety, mothers were asked to rate their focal child's overall health by answering the question: "Would you say that your child's health in general is excellent, very good, good, fair, or poor?" For each of the six COS programs, two outcome measures were developed from the responses. In addition, a third outcome measure concerned whether the focal child had had a serious accident, injury, or poisoning. Between 77 percent (Atlanta) and 82 percent (Riverside) of control group mothers in the COS sample reported that their focal child was in very good or excellent health; between 13 percent (Atlanta) and 24 percent (Grand Rapids) reported that their focal child had had a serious accident, injury, or poisoning since study entry.
Two of the six programs — Riverside LFA and HCD — had impacts in this area. In both of these programs, the found impacts, which were based on the mother's health rating, were unfavorable: Mothers' average rating of the general health of their focal child decreased slightly, and a smaller proportion of children were reported by mothers to be in very good or excellent health. (See Table 4.) Specifically, as a result of the Riverside LFA and HCD programs, mean health ratings (on a scale of 1 to 5 points) decreased by .23 and .20 points, respectively; the proportion of focal children rated as in very good or excellent health decreased by about 12 and 10 percentage points and the proportion rated as in fair or poor health increased by 5 and 4 percentage points, respectively.
It should be noted that the primary measure here was one of global health and not specific health problems. In addition, the health assessments were made by mothers, and not by impartial doctors or through a review of health records. While it is entirely possible that the Riverside programs truly changed children's health status, it is also possible that these findings reflect changes in mothers' perceptions of their children's health. As discussed earlier, the Riverside LFA and HCD programs produced large increases in the likelihood that COS mothers would be employed at some point during the two-year follow-up period; their two-year employment rates, relative to control groups', increased by 65 percent in the Riverside LFA program and by 45 percent in the Riverside HCD program. The next largest increase in two-year employment rates was a 15 percent increase, achieved in the Grand Rapids LFA COS sample. It is possible that mothers in the Riverside LFA and HCD COS samples, given their much greater likelihood of employment, perceived their focal children as being in poorer health than mothers in the control groups. For these mothers, even relatively minor focal child health problems (e.g., ear infections) could have caused disruptions in their daily lives, because they would have needed to either stay home from work to care for the child or perhaps quickly make alternative, non-group child care arrangements so they could go to their jobs. Among control group mothers, who were much less likely to be employed, these same relatively minor health problems might not have been as disruptive and thus memorable.
Children's health and safety was measured by asking parents if any of their children (1) had been removed from their care or (2) had had a serious accident, injury, or poisoning. Among all control group parents in the seven sites, a surprisingly high proportion — up to 8 percent in a site — reported that a child had been removed from their care during the two-year follow-up period because they could not care for or handle the child.(23) (See the upper panel of Table D.1.) Between 18 and 37 percent of all control group members reported that during the previous two years at least one of their children had had an accident, injury, or poisoning requiring a visit to a hospital emergency room or clinic. Among control group parents with all school-age children, these statistics were similar. (See Table 5.) When all families are considered, one of the 11 studied programs (Columbus Traditional) had an impact on children's being removed from their mother's care (an increase in the incidence of this event) and no programs affected the likelihood of children having an accident, injury, or poisoning that required immediate medical attention. (See the lower panel of Table D.1.) When only families with all school-age children are considered, two programs — Columbus Traditional and Grand Rapids HCD — increased the incidence of children being removed from their home and no programs had an impact on the latter outcome. (See Table 6.)
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Two programs had at least one impact on behavioral and emotional adjustment measures; three programs had at least one impact on cognitive functioning and academic achievement measures; and two programs had any impacts on health and safety measures. The 14 impacts found were about evenly split among the three child outcome areas. (See Table 7 for a summary of the COS focal child impacts.) Notably, however, the behavioral and emotional adjustment impacts were both favorable and unfavorable; all of the cognitive functioning and academic achievement impacts were favorable; and the health and safety impacts were unfavorable. There is some evidence that suggests that the diverging directions of the impacts on behavioral outcomes for these young children may reflect the fact that some of the programs affected underlying processes, such as parenting, in different ways.
For this group of families, eight programs had at least one impact on children's behavioral and emotional adjustment; only two programs had any impacts on either academic progress or health and safety. As was the case for the young children in the COS sample, the behavioral and emotional impacts were both favorable and unfavorable; the few impacts on academic progress were favorable; and the few impacts on health and safety (both concerning removal of a child from a mother's care) were unfavorable.
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For focal children of mothers subject to this program, there was a decrease in the proportion of children scoring at the low end on the Behavior Problems Index (BPI) — the one unfavorable impact of the Atlanta LFA program. All other impacts for this program were favorable: There was a decrease in the average frequency of BPI externalizing behavior or emotional problems and an increase in the proportion of children scoring at the high end on the Positive Behavior Scale. In addition, there was an increase in the average Bracken School Readiness Composite test score, a decrease in the proportion of children scoring at the low end Table 7 of the test, and an increase in the proportion scoring at the high end. (See Table 4 and Table 7.) In contrast, other programs had two child impacts at most: In both Riverside programs, mothers' average rating of the general health of their focal child decreased slightly, and a smaller proportion of children were reported by their mother to be in very good or excellent health.
As noted earlier, seven child outcomes were measured for children in this age group. At most, impacts were found on three of the outcomes in any given site: The Riverside LFA program increased the proportion of parents reporting that a child had been suspended from school during the previous two years or that a child was attending a special class for behavioral or emotional problems and decreased the proportion of parents reporting that a child had repeated a grade in the past two years. (See Table 6.) Thus, impacts for this program were both unfavorable and favorable.
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Few evaluations of welfare-to-work programs that have examined effects on children used a random assignment research design. As a result, in contrast to the situation for adult impacts, few benchmarks for characterizing the magnitude of child impacts exist. Nevertheless, this section attempts to assess the size of the found child impacts.
One of the child impacts for this sample — the decrease in the proportion of mothers in the Riverside LFA program rating their young child as in excellent or very good health — had an effect size of one-third of a standard deviation. All other young child impacts were of a smaller magnitude, although, as will be discussed below, a few of the child impacts for lower-risk subgroups were larger. For example, the increase in the average Bracken School Readiness Composite test score for children of mothers in the Atlanta LFA program represents an increase of .14 of a standard deviation and indicates that focal children of program group mothers knew, on average, almost two more school readiness concepts than focal children of control group mothers. (A total of 61 concepts are assessed in this test.)
Most of the child impacts for this sample can be judged as small. Some of the impacts, however, are not so small. For example, the Oklahoma City program increased by 17 percentage points the proportion of parents reporting that at least one of their children was currently receiving or requiring help for behavioral or emotional problems (35 percent of program group parents reported this situation compared with 18 percent of control group parents).(24) Some of the impacts, though smaller in absolute size, are of concern owing to their nature. As one example, four programs increased the proportion of parents reporting that at least one of their children was currently attending a special class for behavioral or emotional problems (although an additional two programs had impacts in the opposite direction on this measure). As another example, the Columbus Traditional and the Grand Rapids HCD programs increased the proportion of parents reporting that a child had been removed from their care during the two-year follow-up period because they could not care for or handle the child. In the Columbus Traditional program, this increase was 6 percentage points (8 percent of program group parents compared with 2 percent of control group parents — a four-fold increase) and the Grand Rapids HCD program produced a 4 percentage point increase here (9 percent of program group parents compared with 5 percent of control group parents).(25)
It is unclear why there was an increase in the proportion of parents in two sites reporting that a child had been removed from their care. A similar result was found in a random assignment evaluation of the New Chance program, a voluntary demonstration project for young women who had children as teenagers and were high school dropouts.(26) The hypotheses that have been suggested for the New Chance finding, however — increased exposure to program staff, an increase in mothers moving out of their parental homes, and increased maternal depression — largely do not "hold true" for the Columbus Traditional and Grand Rapids HCD programs. While program group members in these two programs would have had more contact with case managers than their control group counterparts, increasing the chances that child abuse problems might have been identified, they would not have had any increase in exposure to program staff relative to their counterparts in the Columbus Integrated and Grand Rapids LFA programs. Impacts on child removal from the home were not found in these latter two programs.(27) In addition, few impacts on family living arrangements, which might lead to child neglect or abuse, were found in the two programs. These impacts were the following: For families with children of all ages in the Columbus Traditional program, there was a 5 percentage point increase, noted earlier, in the proportion living with family or friends and paying rent. For the same group of families in the Grand Rapids HCD program, there was a 3 percentage point decrease in the proportion of families whose household included relatives and a 3 percentage point increase in the proportion of families whose household did not include the parent's children. Finally, symptoms of maternal depression were examined in the Grand Rapids programs (not in the Columbus programs), and only for mothers in the COS sample. For that group of mothers in the Grand Rapids HCD program, however, no effect on mothers' depressive symptoms was found (although an increase in such symptoms was found for COS mothers in the Grand Rapids LFA program).
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There were equal numbers of favorable and unfavorable impacts on the focal child. (See Table 7.) As previously noted, however, favorable impacts were concentrated in the area of cognitive development and the few health impacts found were unfavorable. Similarly, for school-age children in all 11 programs, there was an almost equal mix of favorable and unfavorable impacts. (See Table 6.)
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In subgroup analyses examining child impacts for COS sample members, four subgroup divisions were defined, based on family baseline characteristics, that past research has suggested contain a higher-than-average proportion of children at risk for poor development. These overlapping subgroups included families with three children or more or at least two children born less than two years apart (the sibling configuration risk subgroup); families in which the mother, at baseline, did not have a high school diploma or GED or had low scores on reading or math tests (the educational risk subgroup); families in which the mother, at baseline, had received at least five years of welfare, reported at least four barriers to employment, or had never worked full time for six months or more for the same employer (the work risk subgroup); and families in which the mother, at baseline, reported symptoms of depression and a lack of control over her own life (the maternal psychological well-being risk subgroup). Within the COS control group, families who met the criteria of any of these four subgroups had children who, as of the two-year follow-up point, were generally not developing as well as children in families who did not meet these criteria.
Prior research, however, has suggested that the accumulation of risk may be more important than any particular risk factor for children's development. While a child may be able to overcome a single risk factor, the accumulation of risk may "tip the scales" against a child, and result in unfavorable child outcomes. For the COS subgroup analysis, families who met the criteria of no subgroup or only one subgroup were considered to be in the lower cumulative risk subgroup; families who met the criteria of two, three, or all four of the subgroups were considered to be in the higher cumulative risk subgroup. Thus, all families were in one of these two subgroups.
Relatively few young child impacts were found for each of the four defined overlapping subgroups and for the cumulative risk subgroups. The impacts on focal children at higher risk for poor development were small, but in two of the three sites tended to be favorable for education-focused programs and unfavorable for employment-focused programs. The impacts on focal children at lower risk for poor development were larger, tended to be unfavorable, and did not tend to vary by program approach.(28) The unfavorable impacts for focal children at lower risk were clustered in the Grand Rapids LFA program and in both of the Riverside programs. As noted earlier, this type of subgroup analysis was not conducted for school-age children across all evaluation sites.
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The strong experimental research design implemented in the Atlanta, Grand Rapids, and Riverside sites, comparing the effectiveness of LFA and HCD programs, permits a clear assessment of whether program approach — employment- or education-focused — explains any child impacts found. As noted earlier, among the young children in the COS sample, 6 of the 14 child impacts found were within the Atlanta LFA (employment-focused) program. The Atlanta HCD (education-focused) program produced only one child impact. (See Table 4.) However, a pattern of more focal child impacts in LFA programs than in HCD programs did not occur in Grand Rapids and Riverside, the two other sites in which the COS was nested. In fact, the child impacts found for the two Riverside programs related to an identical child health measure and were unfavorable for both the LFA and HCD programs in Riverside. Thus, for the COS sample as a whole, child impacts were not consistently favorable or unfavorable in LFA or HCD programs either. As discussed earlier, however, the situation was somewhat different when subgroups within the COS sample were examined.
Among families with all school-age children in the 11 NEWWS Evaluation programs, employment- and education-focused programs also did not produce systematically different child impacts. (See Table 6.) In the three evaluation sites (Atlanta, Grand Rapids, and Riverside) in which the research design permitted direct comparisons of these two program approaches, there were no clear differences in child impacts. Overall, for the client survey sample in the 11 programs, child impacts were not clustered in one of the two types of program, and neither type of program had consistently favorable effects while the other had consistently unfavorable effects.
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Further research is needed to clearly determine the mechanisms through which some of the programs affected children. As noted above, the strong experimental research design implemented in three of the evaluation sites allows for a rigorous examination of whether program approach affects child impacts. To examine whether other program features explain child impacts, however, nonexperimental approaches, which do not have the rigor of the experimental results discussed so far in the document, are required. At this point in the NEWWS Evaluation, two approaches have been used. Possible patterns in child impacts were ascertained by taking advantage of the large number of programs studied in the school-age child analysis and simply assessing whether child impacts clustered according to the size of the 11 programs' impacts on targeted and nontargeted outcomes. In addition, statistical mediational analyses were carried out for selected focal child impacts in the COS sample. Results from both approaches, which provide only suggestive explanations and do not indicate causality, are briefly summarized below.
There is no obvious relationship between the frequency with which programs imposed sanctions and the observed patterns of child impacts for the client survey sample. (See Table 8, which arrays the same child impacts shown in Table 6 according to the magnitude of each program's impacts on various program implementation features and targeted outcomes. The child impacts are simply rearranged in each panel of the table.) For families with all school-age children, the two Columbus programs and the Atlanta HCD program had the highest sanction rates. Few child impacts were found for these three programs, with two favorable impacts for the Columbus Integrated program; an unfavorable child impact (an increase in the incidence of a child being removed from the mother's care) for the Columbus Traditional program; and no statistically significant child impacts for the Atlanta HCD program. Among the four programs in which sanctioning rates were the lowest for families with all school-aged children, child impacts were both favorable and unfavorable.
Impacts on parents' receipt of a high school diploma or GED do not appear to be associated with favorable child impacts. (See Table 8.) The largest impact on receipt of these credentials was found in the Riverside HCD program, a program that did not show any favorable impacts on the child outcome measures available for the client survey sample. The other program that produced smaller impacts on high school diploma or GED receipt also failed to result in any favorable child impacts.
For families in the COS sample, only two of the six programs — the Grand Rapids and Riverside LFA programs — decreased health care coverage as of the end of the two-year follow-up period. The decrease in mothers' rating of their focal child's health found for both the Riverside LFA and HCD programs does not appear to be connected to this finding: Both Riverside programs resulted in unfavorable child health rating impacts (similar in size in the two programs), while only the Riverside LFA program produced a decrease in family health care coverage. In addition, no other focal child impacts were found for Riverside's LFA (or HCD) program. For families in the COS sample, the Grand Rapids LFA program resulted in an unfavorable impact on focal children's externalizing behavior problems, but no child health rating impacts or other child impacts were found.
For families with children of all ages in the 11 programs, four programs — Riverside LFA, Portland, Columbus Integrated, and Oklahoma City — decreased health care coverage levels. Only two of these programs had any child impacts for this group of families: The Riverside LFA program had one favorable and two unfavorable child impacts; the Columbus Integrated program had one favorable child impact. (These results are not shown in Table 8.)
For families with all school-age children, the large employment impacts in the Riverside LFA program corresponded to unfavorable increases in school suspension rates and in attendance at a special class for behavioral or emotional problems, but also to a favorable decrease in grade repetition. (See Table 8, which presents two-year employment impacts based on Unemployment Insurance earnings records, as is the case throughout this document.) Employment impacts in the Riverside and Grand Rapids HCD programs also corresponded to unfavorable increases in attending a special class for behavioral or emotional problems and, in the case of the Grand Rapids program, to an unfavorable increase in the incidence of a child being removed from his or her mother's care. Programs that, for families with all school-age children, did not have impacts on employment in follow-up years one or two had a mixture of favorable and unfavorable child impacts.
When two-year employment impacts for families with all school-age children are based on parental reports of employment obtained through the client survey, the association between increases in employment and child impacts is no longer apparent. Using this data source, large or moderate employment impacts were found for the Riverside LFA, Riverside HCD, Portland, Columbus Integrated, and Detroit programs.(29) The Riverside LFA program resulted in an unfavorable increase in school suspension rates and a favorable decrease in grade repetition; both the Riverside LFA and HCD programs produced an unfavorable increase in attendance at a special class for behavioral or emotional problems. Child impacts for the Columbus Integrated and Portland programs, however, were all favorable: in the Columbus Integrated program a decrease in attending a special class for behavioral or emotional problems and a decrease in attending a special class for learning problems, and in the Portland program a decrease in behavioral or emotional problems. The Detroit program had no child impacts.
In sum, a clear connection between increases in employment and unfavorable child impacts is not evident.
Among families with all school-age children in the client survey sample, one program — Portland — increased combined income in year 2 of the follow-up period; this program also increased the proportion of families with incomes at or above the poverty level. Portland had one statistically significant child impact, a favorable decrease in the proportion of families reporting a child with behavioral or emotional problems. Two programs — Riverside LFA and Grand Rapids LFA — decreased income; these two programs, as well as the Atlanta HCD and Riverside HCD programs, also had the effect of pushing a proportion of families more deeply into poverty in follow-up year 2, that is, below 50 percent of the poverty line. In the Riverside LFA program, three child impacts were found, two unfavorable and one favorable. The Grand Rapids LFA and the Riverside HCD programs each had one child impact, which was unfavorable. The Atlanta HCD program had no child impacts. The remaining programs had no effect on combined income or poverty status for this sample, and had a mixture of favorable and unfavorable child impacts.
Patterns of child care use did not differ widely across the programs. Most programs produced an increase in the use of paid child care (relative to control groups), but varied to the extent that the child care increase was a function of increases in employment. The programs did differ, however, in their practices or policies concerning child care assistance. Given the impacts observed in most programs on the use of paid child care during employment, more information on the type of child care assistance offered by each program can illuminate the nature of the child care increases. For example, the interpretation of child care impacts similar in size for two programs might be different if one program paid only for licensed care while the other program emphasized low-cost, informal care.
In Atlanta, Oklahoma City, Portland, and Detroit, as noted earlier, child care assistance was a high priority for program staff. In addition, the Atlanta and Oklahoma City programs would reimburse sample members only for licensed child care. For families with children of all ages, these five programs' child impacts were generally favorable, although few were statistically significant. (These results are not shown in Table 8.) The Atlanta LFA program decreased the proportion of families with a child attending a special class for behavioral or emotional problems and the Atlanta HCD program decreased the proportion of families with a child who had recently repeated a grade in school. The Oklahoma City, Portland, and Detroit programs did not have any statistically significant child impacts for this sample. Staff in the Grand Rapids and Columbus programs largely expected parents to make their own child care arrangements. For families with children of all ages, the Grand Rapids programs did not have any child impacts, and the Columbus programs each had one impact: a favorable one in the Columbus Integrated program (a decrease in attendance at a special class for learning problems) and an unfavorable one in the Columbus Traditional program (an increase in the incidence of a child having been removed from the mother's care). In Riverside, low-cost, informal child care was encouraged. In this site, two unfavorable child impacts were found for the LFA program: an increase in the proportion of families with a child who had been recently suspended from school and an increase in attendance at a special class for learning problems.
Five of the 14 impacts on focal children in the COS sample (which reflect the general pattern of favorable cognitive, unfavorable health, and mixed behavioral impacts) were examined in more detail through an analysis that attempts to identify factors that appear to statistically explain the relationships between outcomes. According to this nonexperimental analysis, for example, the Atlanta LFA program's favorable impact on focal children's average school readiness score appears to be related to the program's favorable impacts on mothers' employment and parenting skills. As another example, the Riverside programs' unfavorable impacts on focal children's maternal health rating statistically appear to be related to mothers' increase in work hours and lower likelihood of receiving welfare at the end of the two-year follow-up period in the Riverside LFA program and to mothers' increased feelings of time stress in the Riverside HCD program. The Riverside LFA program's decrease in health insurance coverage for adults and children was not found to be linked to the unfavorable child health rating impacts; similarly, the Riverside HCD program's increase in the use of child care was not statistically related to these child impacts either.
These mediational analyses also suggested that child impacts may reflect a combination of both favorable and unfavorable program impacts on targeted and nontargeted outcomes. The Atlanta LFA program's favorable impact on focal children's reported externalizing behavior problems, for example, appears to be related to the program's favorable impact on parenting skills, despite two of the program's unfavorable impacts: an increase in mothers' time stress and an increase in the proportion of mothers who felt that they were "pushed" by the welfare office to find a job or go to school.
As discussed above, the nonexperimental approaches that have been used so far in the NEWWS Evaluation to attempt to explain the few found child impacts lack by necessity the rigor of the experimental analyses presented in the rest of the document. The two nonexperimental approaches rest on many assumptions which may or may not be true. In addition, the two approaches invoked different assumptions, were applied to different sets of families, and sought to explain impacts on different child outcome measures. As a result, they also will not necessarily yield the same explanations for the found child impacts.
Nevertheless, the results for the families with all school-aged children in 11 programs suggest that programs that place little emphasis on helping welfare recipients obtain good child care or that result in decreases in family income may tend to have unfavorable impacts on children. (There is also some indication that increases in employment may be connected with unfavorable child effects, but this finding held true for administrative records data on employment and not for client survey data on employment.) More likely, these program characteristics or effects interact with each other in particular (currently unknown) ways to affect children. Other examined program features or effects — whether programs were employment- or education-focused, the extent to which a mandatory participation requirement was enforced, increases in parents' high school diploma or GED receipt, and changes in health insurance coverage — do not appear, by themselves, to relate to impacts on children.
The results for the families with preschool-age children in six programs suggest that programs might affect children to the extent that they affect mothers' employment and/or affect children's home environment (for example, mothers' psychological well-being and parenting). This analysis did not find that increases in the use of child care, decreases in health insurance coverage, or changes in family income played a role in explaining the selected child impacts examined.
All of these findings suggest avenues for future research, and the longer-term impact data that will soon be available for both adults and children will provide a rich and more powerful data set with which to pursue these possible explanations of child impacts.
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The NEWWS Evaluation is one of the first random assignment evaluations of mandatory welfare-to-work programs to examine program effects on children. The analyses presented in this synthesis indicate that mandatory welfare-to-work programs targeted to adults, with no services provided directly to children, can have spillover effects on the well-being of children. An examination of two years of follow-up found that the 11 programs studied in the evaluation did not have widespread, large, or consistent effects on the children of the parents (primarily mothers) required to participate in the mandatory programs. But favorable and unfavorable child impacts were found in some of the programs. Further research is needed to determine the mechanisms through which some of the programs affected children. It is important that the parents and the children in the NEWWS Evaluation samples are being followed for a total of five years. Forthcoming analyses of five-year data will indicate whether the impacts on children observed in the first two years of follow-up persist, are magnified, or decline by the end of five years. In addition, new child impacts may emerge over time. As policymakers continue to seek to both encourage adult self-sufficiency and foster poor children's well-being, these and future findings from the NEWWS Evaluation warrant a close watch.
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