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The Office of Human Services Policy's (HSP) FY 2001 Research and Evaluation Plan is generally consistent with last year's funding level, with over half of the projects funded by the targeted welfare outcomes policy research funds. Our research, evaluation, and data projects will be critical to continuing to understand the outcomes of low-income families and to the Department's ability to respond to questions about those outcomes. Our research plan is loosely organized around the following broad topical areas:
As has been the case in the past, our plan is to optimize the potential of our research and evaluation funding by creating a portfolio of studies and strategies. Careful attention has been paid to identifying on-going research, evaluation, and data activities which could be enhanced or modified and to identifying activities being funded or planned by other entities that might provide joint-funding opportunities. Our research agenda is developed and carried out with a full understanding of other efforts, both within and outside the federal government, to assess and monitor various outcomes. We propose to use our research and evaluation funding to fully fund some projects, to fund specific portions of some larger studies, and to co-fund with other federal and state partners yet other projects. This ensures that, to the fullest extent possible, our research complements and enhances other efforts while avoiding unnecessary duplication.
Following are descriptions of the projects ASPE plans to fund in FY 2001 from the targeted appropriation to study welfare outcomes. Some of these projects could be modified or cancelled; other welfare outcomes-funded projects could be added.
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Building and enhancing state and local capacity for data collection and monitoring studies remains integral to HSP's efforts. We plan to continue supporting state-level data collection efforts, administrative data linking, and the creation of public-use and restricted-access data files. We also hope to continue to play an important role in facilitating efforts to build data collection and research capacities, provide technical assistance to improve the quality of research results, ensure more uniformity and comparability across studies, and synthesize results across state and local level monitoring studies. The following new projects and continuation efforts are included in our FY 2001 plan:
The project will fund several state or local area studies of the characteristics of the TANF caseload including potential barriers to employment that welfare recipients may face. The studies will focus on the current TANF caseload at a given point in time and will thus include both recipients who have entered recently and those who have remained on welfare for a longer period of time. States competing for funding will be asked to conduct surveys on a sample of the current caseload to gather information about recipients' characteristics at the personal, family and community level. Topics to be covered may include: (1) demographic characteristics; (2) employment and economic outcomes; and (3) potential barriers to employment and self-sufficiency, including personal barriers (e.g., physical or mental health problems), family barriers (e.g., children with disabilities, domestic violence), and community barriers. To improve the comparability of survey data collection efforts, states will be encouraged to use a standardized survey instrument across the studies. States will also be asked to augment their survey data with administrative data to examine changes over time in recipient characteristics and welfare utilization. Dependent upon specific state interests, additional administrative data analysis is also possible. States will be encouraged to compare characteristics of recipients and barriers to employment across different subgroups, such as short-term and long-term recipients or employed and non-employed recipients.
This project will develop a standardized telephone survey instrument to be used in our State Studies on TANF Caseload project (described above) and provide technical assistance for this project. The contractor will develop this survey instrument based on the review of several existing instruments including, but not limited to, the Women's Employment Survey (WES), the National Survey of America's Families (NSAF), the Survey of Program Dynamics (SPD), the Mathematica Policy Research Caseload Survey, and TANF "leavers" surveys from Missouri and Alameda County. The developed survey will likely consist of a common core set of questions to be administered in all states receiving awards through the caseload state studies project and a series of short (approximately 5 minutes) special topic modules among which states can choose depending on their specific research interests. The contractor will also be responsible for clearing the newly developed instrument with the Office of Management and Budget and providing technical assistance, including two grantee meetings, to those states receiving awards.
This project will fund the analysis of data being collected as part of a pilot study being carried out by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. Non-ASPE funds are being used to design the study, develop the survey instrument, collect survey data, and collate TANF administrative data on a sample of families receiving TANF assistance in one state. The analysis will provide a snapshot of the characteristics of families, barriers which they may face to achieving self-sufficiency, and the services they need and have received. In addition, the analysis plan for this pilot project will help to inform the analysis of our multi-state TANF families characteristics project.
Over a dozen new HHS-sponsored administrative and survey databases will be coming online over the next several months. Secondary analyses of new databases will increase our understanding of the outcomes of welfare reform. These databases include data from the ASPE-supported National Evaluation of Welfare to Work Strategies (NEWWS) and state and local welfare leaver studies. This program will provide dissertation grants to students to explore aspects of welfare reform using the HHS-sponsored data sets. The grants will also build capacity by encouraging younger scholars to undertake welfare-related research. Furthermore, the grants will encourage the use of state-specific surveys and administrative data.
In FYs 1999 and 2000 ASPE funded researcher-initiated grants on various aspects of welfare reform outcomes. Topics were nominated by applicants and selected competitively. We are continuing this grant program and will be supporting research and secondary data analysis efforts covering a variety of information about adults, children, and families, including economic and non-economic well-being and participation in government programs. This grant program will result in policy-relevant research that will further our understanding of how children and families are faring since the introduction of welfare reform. Our intention is to support analyses of information from a variety of sources about economic conditions, health and well-being, socio-demographic characteristics, and the social service needs of low-income individuals, families, and children.
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There is a strong interest in understanding the effects of welfare reform within the context of the devolution of responsibility for major social programs from the federal government to the states. Questions about the implementation and outcomes of welfare reform are legion and encompass a broad range of interests and perspectives. The Department acted early to create a research, evaluation and data strategy that would assure that the implementation of welfare reform and its effects would be documented. The continued infusion of Policy Research funding dedicated to studying welfare outcomes has been and will continue to be invaluable to our efforts to add to and enhance the information that will be available to the Department, Congress, and other interested parties in upcoming debates about future directions for welfare reform. The following new projects and continuation efforts are included in our FY 2001 plan:
State and local agencies are making substantial investments through TANF and other sources to help low income families with demonstrated difficulty entering and sustaining employment. There is a significant amount of activity and a variety of approaches being used to help low-income parents address or cope with the personal and family problems that interfere with their employment stability. ACF and ASPE will support a multi-site evaluation of programs working with hard-to-employ low-income parents in order to identify effective strategies for promoting employment and family well-being and to determine the effects of such programs on employment, earnings, income, welfare dependence, family functioning, and the well-being of children. The contractor will design and conduct a multi-site evaluation that studies the implementation issues, net impact, and benefit-costs of selected programs. During the first year, the contractor will assist HHS in identifying and recruiting programs with potential for evaluation and will assist selected programs in strengthening or expanding services to meet requisite conditions for rigorous evaluation.
ASPE will support a National Governors' Association project to build state and local capacity to provide work supports which help low-income working parents sustain employment and advance in the labor market as well as increase positive family functioning and child well-being. The project is designed to make these kinds of supports for low-income working families a central and primary objective within existing or developed entities (e.g. one-stop career centers). Specific activities would include brief case studies of existing projects and convening a roundtable of state/local partners interested in further development of projects along these lines. DOL/ETA and USDA/ERS are also expected to provide funding for this project.
ASPE will be one of several agencies participating in this project to develop survey questions around nondegree educational attainment. Currently, many national surveys measure whether a person has a high school diploma, two-year, four-year or graduate degree, but fail to capture nondegree programs, for example, a ten month certificate in home health service. These funds will be used for development and cognitive testing of questions on nondegree educational attainment that could eventually be incorporated into national surveys. The availability of such data would greatly enhance research and inform policy around labor market outcomes for current, former and potential TANF recipients. Our work on this project would be in conjunction with ASPE's membership on The Committee on Measures of Educational Attainment, chartered by the Interagency Council on Statistical Policy.
Although a number of national and state surveys have begun gathering measures of family hardship (e.g., utility cutoffs, inability to get needed medical attention, food insecurity, evictions), it is hard to respond to Congressional interest in gathering information on a state-by-state basis, given the small sample size of most national surveys and the lack of comparability across state surveys. One long-term option is to add material hardship questions to a supplement of the Current Population Survey (CPS) and administer the supplement three times, to gather state-by-state estimates over a multi-year time-period, as has been done for the Food Security Supplement. This project would explore the feasibility of this and other long-term options. It would include a review of questions included in national surveys and state studies, an options paper for moving toward state-level estimates, a one-day meeting to consider these issues, and a set of recommended questions on material hardship.
ASPE will provide continuing support to the Project on Devolution and Urban Change. This ongoing project studies impacts of welfare reform and welfare to work programs on low-income individuals, families, and the communities in which they live, in four large urban areas — Cleveland, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami. ACF/HHS and ERS/USDA have joined ASPE in funding this project for the past two years. The federal contribution to this project leverages a substantial investment by foundations, which are funding the majority of the over $20 million project cost.
PRWORA authorized HHS to retain data from the Federal Parent Locator Service (FPLS) for TANF and child support enforcement research purposes. This is a rich source of wage and employment data, but does not include key program participation and demographic variables. Previously, ASPE, OCSE, and OPRE funded consultations with researchers and policymakers, resulting in a report proposing three design options for a research database which would combine FPLS data with other HHS data to give a comprehensive and continuing picture of the low income population. The Department is currently assessing these options. This project would implement the chosen database design by constructing a research database for Department use and perhaps putting together public use data files.
In FY 2000, ASPE issued a task order to the Urban Institute to analyze and synthesize available information on state welfare and related support policies and assess which characteristics of state programs or background characteristics are most significant in predicting outcomes. As part of this project, Urban convened a technical work group (TWG) of researchers to make recommendations on which existing typologies were most promising and on directions for analysis. The TWG recommended that Urban develop new typologies, rather than modifying existing typologies, and suggested that cluster and factor analysis be used to determine which policies were most significant in differentiating between different packages of state policy choices. In order to carry out these recommendations, the task order will need to be modified and additional resources provided.
This project supports the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) Research Forum database and web site. The web site is designed to provide the most reliable information to key stakeholders, including researchers, policymakers, administrators, and practitioners concerning welfare reform interventions being tested; populations and geographic areas being assessed; research methods being used; major findings already available; and when future findings will be released. The data base and web site provide valuable information useful to Federal officials and other practitioners regarding research and demonstration initiatives related to welfare reform and the well-being of low-income children and families.
This project provides the final year commitment to support a multi-year effort by South Carolina's Office of Budget and Control Board's Office of Research and Statistics to link administrative data and additional data from surveys of former welfare recipients and those diverted from cash assistance. The funds are provided through an ACF cooperative agreement and will allow South Carolina to continue its contract for the expansion of the follow-up studies.
This project continues ASPE's on-going core support for the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. ASPE funds provide partial support for the continued collection and processing of longitudinal data relevant to research on economic factors and income support mechanisms, health, fertility, medical care and disability affecting the poor and the elderly. ASPE funds will continue to support an expansion of the set of welfare related questions to assess the effects that recent reforms have on the extent to which families come on TANF (entry effects). In addition, there is a one time supplement to support an expanded sample of low income families with children for core data collection activities related to the Child Supplement.
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Our strategy in the children and youth area focuses on early childhood, youth, and children's services systems. Policy areas of interest include improving our understanding of early childhood education, promotion of youth development and prevention of teen risk behaviors, and the examination of child protection and child welfare service systems. The following new projects and continuation efforts are included in our FY 2001 plan:
As a complement to work on national indicators, ASPE sponsored an initiative to assist 14 states in developing and monitoring indicators of the health and well-being of children and youth as changes occur in welfare and other key policy areas. The 14 states are interested in additional opportunities to advance their work, particularly in the area of youth indicators. Other states are interested in learning from the progress of the 14 states. There are several national research initiatives which have been focusing on improving youth outcomes measures in population-based surveys and for program evaluation purposes. This project will bring these various efforts together. It will develop a summary of the state indicator initiative, create an inventory of the major national and state efforts to improve youth measures, design a meeting that will enable new states to learn from the indicator states, and identify the best opportunities for HHS to assist states in the future.
The vast majority of TANF recipients are children. In 1999, over 5 million children received TANF assistance while approximately 2 million of their parents did. One third of all TANF cases are "child-only," wherein assistance goes only to children. The federal government spends $16 billion a year on TANF, more than on the traditional "children's programs" of Head Start, child care and all child welfare programs combined. However, while some experimental studies of welfare to work programs have measured outcomes for children, broader discussions of welfare policies and changes are rarely framed around issues for children. As we approach the reauthorization of TANF, the question of how children are affected by welfare policies is one of the most critical issues for policymakers to address. This project would result in an issue paper about the implications of changes in a broad range of welfare-related policies, including TANF and child support, for children of various ages and the systems that serve them. The paper will review the range of issues relevant to children and welfare reform, summarize evidence, and identify data gaps and important questions for policymakers and researchers to consider.
With other federal and private funders, ASPE and ACF are working with states to improve measurement of child health and well-being outcomes in state welfare evaluations. Continuation funding will be provided for states to receive research technical assistance on collecting survey data using the common core of instruments, using administrative data sources, and developing and coordinating data analysis and reporting strategies. A focus of this year's work will be the production of a synthesis of the findings from three of the states. The research technical assistance is provided by the NICHD Research Network on Family and Child Well-Being and conducted by Child Trends.
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Our strategy in the family formation area is to better understand family structure and functioning. In particular there is increased emphasis on fertility, family composition and well-being, including poverty and health insurance status. While there are encouraging indications that trends in these areas are improving, there remain reasons for concern. For example, the incidence of out-of-wedlock childbearing and the rates of child poverty and uninsurance are still high. We started last year looking more at the impact of welfare reform on marriage and its impact on the living arrangements of children. We will also continue to focus on looking at how parents are fulfilling their economic and emotional responsibilities to their families. The following new projects and continuation efforts are included in our FY 2001 plan:
One of the stated goals of TANF is to "end the dependence of needy parents on government benefits by promoting job preparation, work and marriage." While researchers and policy makers have focused substantial attention on increasing labor market participation among TANF recipients and the caseload declines that have followed, there has been far less focus on efforts to promote marriage. This proposed project will examine efforts at the state and local level specifically aimed at promoting and supporting marriage. The project would begin by taking an inventory of state and local policies and programs that promote and support marriage, looking at those programs associated with TANF as well as other programs. This information will be gathered through a variety of information sources, including list-serves such as Smartmarriages, a survey of existing documentation at the state and local level, and interviewers with key people knowledgeable about policy developments around the country related to marriage. The second aspect of the project will be a literature review of recent findings on the effects of marriage from sources such as Linda Wait's "The Case for Marriage." This literature will focus not only on the findings, but also on the methodological strengths and limitations of the research.
Welfare reform's effects on family formation and composition as well as how such changes can affect the financial resources and material well-being of members of low-income households are issues of strong interest to policy makers. Through a literature review, this project will document what is currently known about the effects of welfare policies on family formation and resource sharing. The review will provide an overview of existing research across disciplines (e.g. anthropology, sociology and economics). The study will also summarize key data sources on this issue (e.g., SIPP, CPS, NLSY, SPD, National Survey of America's Families, National Survey of Family Growth) and their strengths and weaknesses for investigating family composition and household resource and well-being issues.
Recently released findings based upon a small sample from the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation's (MDRC) evaluation of the Minnesota Family Investment Program suggest that the program had significant positive impacts on the marital stability of two-parent families. MDRC plans to conduct a follow-up study of all two-parent recipient families in the sample to determine if the robustness of their findings can be replicated in the larger sample. This work is a necessary first step before a decision is made about conducting a longer-term follow-up analysis of well-being outcomes for these families. Initially, ASPE will fund the first step of this MFIP follow-up work - the testing of the marital stability finding for a larger sample. If the original findings hold up for the larger sample, the balance of the funds will be committed to partially fund measurement of longer-term, well-being outcomes under MFIP. MDRC is also seeking other funders for this work.
ASPE has begun work looking at families and children that are affected by the high rates of incarceration in some low-income communities. This project, which builds on the "From Prisons to Home: The Effect of Incarceration on Children, Families, and Low-Income Communities" project funded in FY 2000, will provide essential information about the issues for and choices made by states as they implemented cross-cutting strategies that involve criminal justice and health and human services systems in their work with incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals and their families. Many of these families are current or former welfare recipients. A State Symposium will be held in the Summer of 2001, bringing together the collaborating agency heads and other key stakeholders from selected states to obtain information on both the development and implementation phases of these State efforts. Key areas to be explored are resource needs, identifying barriers, partnership building, and implementation lessons. National organizations, such as the National Governors' Association and National Conference of State Legislatures, and other federal and private sector representatives will also be invited to the Symposium.
Between fiscal years 1999 and 2002, HHS will have made up to $400 million in awards for the Bonus to Reward Decrease in Illegitimacy Ratio, a provision of PRWORA. Yet, as reauthorization approaches, questions are arising as to whether changes are needed to make this provision a more effective tool for reducing out-of-wedlock births. The project will gather information from a sample of states to learn more about what programs aimed at reducing out-of-wedlock births were in operation before and after the bonus, and about what factors encouraged development of state initiatives to reduce out-of-wedlock births, including competition for and receipt of the "Illegitimacy Bonus." This information will be gathered through phone interviews of state policy makers and stakeholders, existing documentation on programs, budgets and government policies, and interviews with key people knowledgeable about state developments in family policy.
The Partners for Fragile Families demonstrations are designed to help young unwed parents by helping fathers to work with the mothers in sharing the legal, financial, and emotional responsibilities of parenthood. HHS approved ten state waivers for the Partners for Fragile Families Demonstration projects. Working at the community level with non-profit and faith-based partners to provide employment, health, and social services, these projects will test new approaches to involving young fathers with their children and to helping mothers and fathers build stronger parenting partnerships. The evaluation has three broad purposes: to increase knowledge about systems change; to build knowledge about program operations and delivery of services to fragile families; and to describe client behavior. A process and outcome evaluation will be conducted by interviewing all service providers, including child support enforcement, community based organizations, and partner agencies; and by analyzing client data and surveys. An optional ethnographic study will be included in the RFP. This project is jointly supported by ASPE and the Office of Child Support Enforcement.
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Our strategy in the special populations and local service delivery issues area is to examine innovative approaches for delivering services while ensuring accountability. The research in this area is designed not only to improve the effectiveness of assistance and services delivered to communities in general, but also to reach and effectively serve populations who have the greatest difficulty in succeeding in employment and thus may be left behind. Issues related to substance abuse, mental health, and domestic violence, as well as research on immigrants, are included in this section. The following new projects and continuation efforts are included in our FY 2001 plan:
With the devolution of responsibility for welfare programs under TANF, many state and local governments have turned to non-profit, and increasingly for-profit, organizations to carry out human services functions that have traditionally been provided by the public sector. As a result, there has been an increase in the prevalence of performance-based contracts, as state and local governments try to maintain accountability while testing the effectiveness of these non-traditional service providers. This project will undertake case studies of state and local governments, selected to ensure geographic diversity, and study of a wide range of TANF-funded services. The contractor will interview both agency administrators and front-line workers to determine the types of services that have been privatized and the performance measures used by government entities in their relationships with private organizations. A series of reports will describe emerging positive trends and problem areas, in both the services delivered and the types of contracts.
The New Immigrant Survey is a large, longitudinal survey of recently arriving immigrants beginning in 2000. INS and NICHD/NIH are the principal funders of the survey. ASPE has contributed to this effort and has also provided input to the planning of the study and the development of the pilot instruments. ASPE's contribution helps ensure that comprehensive and relevant data are collected and analyzed about program utilization and hardship and well-being over time among newly arriving low-income immigrant families in different states. In particular, ASPE's continued support will ensure that the study focuses on what is happening to children in these families under welfare reform.
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