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Interim Status Report on
Research on the Outcomes of Welfare Reform:
[ Report’s Main Page |
Introduction & Overview |
This Chapter |
1998 Projects |
Appendix A |
Appendix B ]
Following are descriptions of projects ASPE plans to fund in FY 1999 from
the targeted appropriation to study welfare outcomes.
To gain further insight on the DHHS welfare outcomes research plan, the Office
of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) plans to continue
funding the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Expert Panel in 1999 to evaluate
the design of current, proposed, and future studies of the effects of the
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA)
of 1996. The continuation of this Panel Study will assist the Department
in: (1) reviewing our existing research efforts on the effects of welfare
reform in the context of other efforts; (2) examining the appropriate data
sources, research designs and statistical methods for analyzing welfare reform
outcomes; and (3) identifying research gaps and data needs for the continued
study of welfare reform. Over the course of this 30-month Panel Study,
the Academy will continue to conduct workshops and will publish both an
Interim Report and a Final Report. The Interim
Report will contain a summary of the Panel’s first workshop as
well as the Panel’s early recommendations on the Department’s welfare
reform research plan. The Final Report will document the
Panel’s comprehensive list of final recommendations on welfare outcomes
research. The Interim Report is expected in the summer of 1999; project
is expected to be completed by March 2001.
Last year, $2.9 million in grants was awarded to 13 states and counties to
study the outcomes of welfare reform by tracking families leaving the TANF
program. Two of the grantees were funded for the first year of proposed
twoyear projects. Secondyear funding of these two projects
is a high priority. In addition, there are important benefits to be
gained from providing continuation funding for other selected grants.
Such additional funds would be used to examine earnings and employment data
over a longer period, to administer surveys to additional cohorts, or to
fund additional data linkages or analyses of administrative data. Funding
decisions will take into consideration the quality of interim reports, progress
to date, and our interest in the proposed follow-up work, providing an incentive
for higher quality work among existing grantees.
Grants of approximately $50,000 each were awarded to 13 states in September
1998 for developing and monitoring indicators of children’s health and
wellbeing. The overall aims of this project are to: (1)
promote state efforts to develop and monitor indicators of the health and
wellbeing of children as welfare reform and other policy changes occur;
and (2) help to institutionalize the use of indicator data in state and local
policy work. In relation to welfare monitoring, the purpose is to help
states focus on areas where children’s wellbeing may be
affected — positively or negatively — by welfare
policies. States are encouraged to work on indicator strategies for
monitoring the health and wellbeing of children whose families leave
the welfare rolls. States which received awards in FY 1998 will be
eligible to apply for continuation funding in FY 1999, which will be awarded
to states on the basis of their advancements in indicator work during the
first year and their identified goals, objectives and strategies for advancing
their work during the second year. A description of each state’s
project to advance child indicators initiatives can be found in
Appendix B.
Secondyear continuation funding is planned for researchers at the Chapin
Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago to coordinate research
technical assistance to the states receiving the child indicators grants.
Chapin Hall will continue to work with state and federal staff to develop
or enhance the capacities of these states in creating children’s health
and wellbeing indicators and in using indicator data to inform policy
formulation and implementation. This technical assistance effort emphasizes
collaborative work among the states and peertopeer assistance
efforts. Research technical assistance is being provided, for example,
on conceptual and methodological issues in identifying and measuring appropriate
sets of child health and wellbeing indicators within and across states;
ways of creating or using survey and administrative data and of combining
several data approaches; and ways to involve state policy makers who can
help institutionalize data systems for measuring and tracking child indicators
and establish procedures for using indicator information to inform policy
deliberations.
This project, through a grant to the Urban Institute jointly funded by ASPE,
the Department’s Administration for Children and Families and Health
Care Financing Administration, the Department of Agriculture and the Department
of Justice (Immigration and Naturalization Service), is being continued to
deepen our understanding of the impact of recent changes in Federal laws
on immigrant families and children by conducting a largescale study
of immigrants and their communities in Los Angeles and New York City.
A commitment of ASPE funds will ensure full funding for the third and final
year of this project.
On April 1, 1999 ASPE announced the availability of funds and request for
applications from states and large counties to determine the status of TANF
applicants and potential TANF applicants, individuals and families entering
the TANF caseload and individuals and families who leave TANF. Through
these grants ASPE hopes to support state efforts to gather a variety of
information about individuals and their families who are formally or informally
diverted from TANF, including their economic and noneconomic
wellbeing and participation in government programs. The Department
is interested in learning about the degree to which TANF applicants are aware
of their potential eligibility for Medicaid, food stamps, and other programs
and services that are important in helping families make a successful transition
to work. Each grantee will be expected to use administrative records
from multiple programs and/or other datagathering techniques to identify
and conduct research into the experiences of the study population (as defined
by the grantee) over time. It is anticipated that approximately 4-6
grants of between $200,000 to $250,000 each will be awarded; a large number
of interested states and large counties submitted applications by the May
17, 1999 deadline.
The welfare reform legislation of 1996 was intended to promote independence
by substituting employment for entitlement to cash benefits for adult caretakers
of dependent children. Tracking the post1996 employment experience
of adults who were receiving AFDC benefits in 1996 offers a means of assessing
how well the legislation is meeting its intended goals. One means of
carrying out such tracking is to follow the post1996 earnings of a
nationally representative sample (or samples) of adults who received AFDC
benefits in 1996. A number of ongoing Bureau of the Census demographic
surveys identified nationally representative samples of AFDC adult recipients
in that year and have been or shortly will be exactmatched to Social
Security Summary Earnings Histories. (The three major surveys which
both identified 1996 receipt of AFDC benefits by adults and have been or
will be matched to SSA earnings records are the 1996 panel of the Survey
of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), the March 1997 Current Population
Survey, and the Survey of Program Dynamics (SPD) baseline survey.)
Under this project, funds would be transferred to the Bureau of the Census
to update these earnings histories subsequent to calendar year 1996 and track
the presence and amount of annual earnings of 1996 adult AFDC recipients.
Depending on the survey, various demographic and personal characteristics
related to employment outcomes should be available. For example, age,
race, educational attainment, and number and age of dependent children should
be available from all three surveys. Details on health status, functional
and work limitations, work history, current school enrollment and job training,
as well as information on the health of minor children of the adult recipient,
may be available from some surveys. Consideration will be given to
combining the sample sizes from the three surveys to assess employment outcomes
by age of recipient, by race and Hispanic origin, by principal levels of
educational attainment, by current enrollment status, by presence of children
under age two, by presence of healthrelated work limitations, living
arrangements, work experience, etc. Efforts will also be made to
disentangle policy and labor market effects on observed outcomes.
Senate Report language to the FY 1999 Appropriations bill expressed the need
to develop a mechanism to provide Statebased or multistate
information, particularly in less densely populated areas. Iowa State
University has been working with the Census Bureau to develop an approach
for statelevel surveys that are relevant for local welfare program
design, implementation, and evaluation and can be integrated into the
Bureau’s Survey of Program Dynamics (SPD). The Bureau of the Census
is currently supporting work by Iowa State University to explore the feasibility
of extending and expanding the SPD to capture statelevel reliable samples
for use in exploring the outcomes of federal and state policies, as well
as local economic conditions of lowincome families. ASPE funding
would support further feasibility work on the extended survey in response
to Census Bureau findings, including questionnaire design and the development
of a dualframe methodology for defining a sampling frame. Given
the need for statespecific questions and data, but desire for a national
framework, we believe this is a promising approach.
The LASFC is a fouryear longitudinal survey of children, their families,
and their neighborhoods in Los Angeles. While designed to answer broader
research questions about the effects of neighborhoods on children, the study
offers an opportunity to examine the effects of welfare reform at the
neighborhood level. The study design includes both extensive household
surveys and collection of detailed longitudinal information on neighborhoods
through interviews with families, key informants, and service providers,
on-site observation, and extensive administrative data. ASPE support
would be used to help supplement the household survey to obtain richer data
on the dynamics in health insurance coverage (and perhaps health status)
among children and families over the study period.
ASPE expects to provide funding to the Institute for Research on Poverty
at the University of WisconsinMadison as a follow-on to a recently
completed administrative data study of former welfare recipients. Early
findings from the first year of the study, which address the outcomes of
those who left welfare prior to both the enactment of TANF and the implementation
of Wisconsin Works (also known as W-2, Wisconsin’s replacement for AFDC),
show that almost half (47.8 percent) of AFDC recipients in 1995 left welfare
for at least two consecutive months between August 1995 and July 1996, but
30 percent later returned. About half of those who left had incomes
greater than their foregone AFDC benefits and those who left AFDC were more
likely to have incomes above the poverty level than those who stayed.
Those who left and did not return were less likely to be poor than those
who returned; however, most families who left remained poor and only a small
fraction had incomes above 150 percent of poverty. This followup
study will allow the Institute to track the outcomes for women in the first
study further and to begin tracking the outcomes of a second group of women
who left AFDC closer to the time of the implementation of Wisconsin Works.
As in the first year, the continuation analysis will be conducted using linked
administrative data from the state of Wisconsin including: (1) AFDC
data, Food Stamp data, and Medicaid data from the Client Assistance for
ReEmployment and Economic Support administrative database (CARES),
and (2) earnings and employment data from the Unemployment Insurance records
database (UI). By documenting the employment outcomes of former recipients
who were exposed to the comprehensive welfare reform programs in Wisconsin,
this follow-up project will offer a useful analysis of the wellbeing
of individuals who left welfare during a time of immense policy change.
ASPE plans to issue a Request for Proposals (RFP) to solicit
researcherinitiated proposals to study important questions related
to the outcomes of welfare reform. Issues to be studied could
include: entry effects, diversion programs, and access to other support
benefits (e.g., food stamps and Medicaid). While participation in
incometested programs is declining, need appears to remain strong.
Some have argued that participation is down because of time limits, work
requirements or increased stigma. This set of research would explore
the reasons families with children are not applying or re-applying for assistance
in time of need. George Washington University/Urban Institute researchers
recently reported in “Diversion as a WorkOriented Welfare Reform
Strategy and its Effect on Access to Medicaid” that the implementation
of aggressive state welfare reform efforts can lead to decreased access to
other public benefits such as Medicaid. ASPE wants to stimulate further
research on what happens to cases that are diverted or otherwise do not
participate.
People being removed from public assistance who have not found jobs or achieved
selfsufficiency may become clients of emergency services such as soup
kitchens and homeless shelters. In some cities, there are
welldeveloped networks of private human services providers that collect
data about their clients. A case study of demand for private emergency
services in such a city or cities could directly address the question of
what is happening to nongovernmental human services providers and
indirectly address the question of what is happening to former, current,
and potential welfare recipients who may be among the clients of emergency
services. By examining policy changes and economic factors along with
changes in the demand for other providers of human services, it will be possible
to determine if any cost shifting is taking place from government to these
other providers.
With welfare reform we are likely to see not only an influx of lowskilled
workers into the labor market, but also growth in the working poor
population. While much overlap exists between the working poor population
and the lowwage/lowskilled worker population, some important
distinctions remain. This proposed data analysis project would examine
the distinctions between the working poor population and the
lowwage/lowskilled worker population (e.g., education level,
skill level, family size, household composition, gender, marital status,
industry of employment and hours/level of employment). It would also
compare the different definitions of the working poor population based on
variations in the definition of worker, the poverty threshold, and total
income. For example, the working poor population could include workers
who are neither lowskilled nor lowwage, but are not able to
financially support their families due to family size, household composition,
and/or the total number of workers in the family unit. This project
would also include analyses of other characteristics/“outcomes”
of the working poor, such as fringe benefits associated with employment and
welfare services used in conjunction with employment.
This project would help us understand welfare outcomes in a rural environment
by studying the individual and labor market characteristics of the rural
working poor population and the impacts of various economic and public policy
developments. It would update, using 1997 Census data, a Center on
Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) project from 10 years ago (based on 1987
Census data), which found that 70 percent of rural poor families who were
not ill, disabled, or retired were people who worked all or part of the
year. The study could also examine the impacts on the rural working
poor of various economic events and policy changes that have occurred since
the earlier study, including welfare reform and economic recession and
expansion. In addition, it would contrast the differences between the
rural and urban working poor in terms of individual characteristics, job
prospects, and labor market factors.
ASPE anticipates undertaking three related projects using the newly available
source of welfare reform data collected through the Emergency TANF Data Report
(ETDR): (1) working with the Administration for Children and
Families’ Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, to improve the
collection, storage, and release of these data; (2) doing crosssectional
analyses using all data from all states; and (3) assessing the feasibility
of creating a longitudinal database using data from individual states.
The first step would be to resolve the technical issues associated with cheaply
storing and transferring the large amounts of data required for a comparative
analysis of AFDC and TANF and then building an archive of TANF data for
researchers. Second, crosssectional analyses would compare AFDC
and TANF using a “before vs after” welfare reform notion, analyzing
similarities and differences in the caseloads. Finally, a single state
with good data would be selected to explore the research potential of developing
a longitudinal data set, preferably combined with additional linked data
sets for more indepth analyses. Longitudinal analyses in this
early phase of administrative data reporting would focus on shortterm
outcomes, including changes in work participation, child care use, Medicaid,
and household composition (especially to childonly cases and conversion
of twoparent to oneparent cases). If successful, this
feasibility work will lay the groundwork for more extensive creation of state
longitudinal databases.
Contractor support may be needed to support ASPE staff in working with the
14 grantees awarded welfare outcomes grants in fiscal year 1998, as well
as the additional grantees expected to be awarded grants in fiscal year
1999. Activities could include gathering the various grantees together
for national planning meetings (including providing experts to present technical
assistance to the grantees and handling meetingrelated logistical matters),
providing technical assistance, working with them to enhance research quality
and comparability across grantees, and synthesizing the FY 1998 state and
county grantees’ findings into a publishable report.
Where to?
[ Report’s Main Page |
Introduction & Overview |
This Chapter |
1998 Projects |
Appendix A |
Appendix B ]
[ HSP Home Page |
ASPE Home Page |
HHS Home Page ]