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Interim Status Report on
Research on the Outcomes of Welfare Reform:
[ Report’s Main Page |
Introduction & Overview |
1999 Projects |
This Chapter |
Appendix A |
Appendix B ]
As part of its overall research strategy for studying welfare outcomes, ASPE
is currently conducting a Panel Study with the National Academy of Sciences
(NAS) 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. Through a combination of workshops, quarterly
panel meetings, and written reports, the NASappointed panel of experts
continues to:
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Review our existing research efforts on the effects of welfare reform;
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Examine the appropriate data sources, research designs and statistical methods
for analyzing welfare reform outcomes; and
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Identify research gaps and data needs for the continued study of welfare
reform.
To gain further insight on the Department’s welfare outcomes research
plan, ASPE will continue to fund the National Academy of Sciences Expert
Panel in 1999.
Estimated Completion Date: Interim report Summer 1999; project
completed March 2001.
ASPE awarded approximately $2.9 million in grants in September 1998 to study
the outcomes of welfare reform on individuals and families who leave the
TANF program, who apply for cash welfare but are never enrolled because of
nonfinancial eligibility requirements or diversion programs, and/or
who appear to be eligible but are not enrolled. The grants were awarded
to 10 states and 3 large counties or consortia of counties under a competitive
announcement published in the Federal Register in May 1998. In addition,
a grant was made to South Carolina, under a different grant announcement,
to conduct a similar study of families leaving TANF. Funding for these
projects was supplemented with interagency transfers from the Departments
of Agriculture and
Labor, and the DHHS
Administration for Children and
Families.
The major purpose of the grants is to enable grantees to track and monitor
how individuals and their families do in the first year after they leave
welfare and to provide a foundation for longer follow up. Grantees
are using administrative data, survey data, or a combination of both types
of data to address a number of important research questions, grouped into
eight general research topic areas: employment and earnings, other
income supports, health insurance, child care, child wellbeing, case
closures and recidivism, barriers to selfsufficiency,
insecurity/deprivation, and other topics. Interim reports have been
released by four of the grantees; others are expected within the next few
months. Final reports are due at the end of the project period, which
varies from 12 to 17 months for most grantees. Three grantees proposed
a twoyear project period, with secondyear funding subject to
grantee performance and availability of funds.
Brief descriptions of each project, including estimated completion dates,
are included in Appendix A.
ASPE funded a grant to South Carolina(1) to
allow the State to contract for a continuation and expansion of the follow-up
study of families leaving TANF. The information resulting from their
expanded data collection effort will be linked to their existing administrative
data archive to create a rich database for research on closed or diverted
cases. This project is described in Appendix A and is counted as the
14th state grant to study the outcomes of welfare reform on
individuals and families who leave the TANF program, who apply for cash welfare
but are never enrolled because of nonfinancial eligibility requirements
or diversion programs, and/or who appear to be eligible but are not enrolled.
Estimated Completion Date: April 2003
Grants 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: (1) to 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) to 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.
Each state was required to form a partnership of state government agencies
with responsibilities for addressing children’s issues. At a minimum,
the partnerships were to include the state welfare agency and state agencies
and councils with lead responsibilities for children’s programs.
Technical assistance has been provided for states to work with one another,
research and policy experts, and federal staff. The Department’s
Administration for Children and Families also provided funding for this
project. Short descriptions of each state’s project can be found
in Appendix B. States which
received awards in FY 1998 will be eligible to apply for continuation funding
in FY 1999, based on their advancements in indicator work during the first
year and their identified goals, objectives and strategies for advancing
their work during the second year.
Estimated Completion Date: The twoyear project period
ends in September 2000, although it is anticipated that the states will continue
their indicator efforts beyond that time. Quarterly progress and annual
summary reports will be submitted throughout the project period.
The Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago
was awarded funding in September 1998 to coordinate technical assistance
for the state children’s indicators grantees. Chapin Hall is being
funded to convene grantee meetings, to promote the exchange of ideas and
knowledge among states, and to organize and coordinate technical assistance
from a network of experts from a variety of organizations. Assistance
is being provided on issues in conceptualizing and measuring children’s
indicators and institutionalizing the use of indicators in policy
processes.
Estimated Completion Date: September 2000
Mathematica Policy Research is continuing to explore various ways in which
Food Stamp Program administrative data can be used to look at welfare leavers
and nonparticipants. This could include various analyses depending
on their feasibility, such as an assessment of whether TANF leavers and
nonparticipants in the 1998 grantee states and counties are representative
of leavers and nonparticipants in the rest of the country. Another
example of potential analysis under this study is a simulation of changes
in TANF participation rates among those who are income eligible and on Food
Stamps both before and after welfare reform, looking at the characteristics
of the caseload, program parameters, and economic conditions.
Estimated Completion Date: Fall 1999
This evaluation will provide important information about the effectiveness
of a type of intervention several states are experimenting with to move substance
abusing welfare clients toward selfsufficiency. The intervention
New Jersey is implementing includes screening of welfare recipients for substance
abuse problems, treatment referral mechanisms with enhanced case management,
and substance abuse treatment coordinated with employment and training or
vocational services. The evaluation will, using a random assignment
model, compare two models for providing such services, looking at outcomes
in several domains including employment and family selfsufficiency,
substance use and associated behaviors, child development and family functioning,
and child welfare involvement. The intervention being evaluated is
intended to improve the postwelfare prospects of TANF recipients with
substance abuse problems. The evaluation is being conducted in two
New Jersey counties (Essex and Atlantic).
The grantee, the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, will produce
three products resulting from the evaluation which are intended for use by
the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and the state to disseminate
information about the project. These include: (1) a descriptive
profile of the population served by New Jersey’s welfaretowork
program, including how many have substance use disorders as well as other
barriers to selfsufficiency; (2) an implementation report describing
the difficulties encountered and lessons learned about implementing these
services, as well as issues to be considered in establishing substance abuse
interventions in welfare contexts; and (3) an outcomes report describing
outcomes for participants and controls 12 months posttreatment.
ASPE and ACF have provided support for this project. Other aspects
of the evaluation are being funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the
Department’s National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Estimated Completion Date: Random assignment of clients to
the intervention models is to begin April 1999. An outcomes report
is expected in 2001.
This project is a supplement to an ongoing fouryear study of the
implications of welfare reform for lowincome families living in Boston,
Chicago, and San Antonio. Funds are being used to explore how welfare
reform is affecting the lives of a particularly vulnerable subset of the
welfare population — adults and children with disabilities.
This will be accomplished by conducting longitudinal case studies of families
with members with disabilities receiving TANF and through a broader survey
effort. The purpose of the data collection efforts is to better understand
how recent work participation requirements and time limits under welfare
reform are affecting service utilization, family member’s health and
development, support networks, parenting, and child care arrangements.
This project is part of a broader study being undertaken by researchers at
Johns Hopkins University, Pennsylvania State University, Harvard University,
University of Chicago, University of TexasAustin, and the University
of North CarolinaChapel Hill. It has been jointly funded by ASPE,
ACF, and the Administration on Developmental Disabilities (ADD). The
Department’s National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
(NICHD) is the primary funder of the broader study, along with several private
foundations.
Estimated Completion Date: A first year report on the ethnographic
case studies is due in December 1999; results from the longitudinal survey
will be available pending the completion of data collection and analysis.
ASPE, ACF, the Department’s Health Care Financing Administration, the
Department of Agriculture and the Department of Justice Immigration and
Naturalization Service are providing support 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, through a grant to the Urban
Institute. Field work begin in the spring of 1999. Preliminary
analyses of Los Angeles County administrative data and the Census Bureau’s
Current Population Survey show that the participation rate of immigrants
in a wide array of benefit programs has declined more precipitously than
the rate of citizens, even prior to implementation of new immigrant eligibility
restrictions. Obtaining primary data on immigrant families in Los Angeles
and New York City should begin to help us better understand the causes of
these declines. Funds were also used to support updating the TRIM modeling
program(2) to include parameters about immigrants,
and as a subset, refugees and nonrefugees using 1995 data as a
baseline. The updated model has already been used to estimate the rate
of participation in the Medicaid program by immigrants.
Estimated Completion Date: Fall of 2000.
Nearly a quarter of all TANF cases are “childonly” assistance
units in which there is no adult recipient, compared to a decade ago when
only 12 percent of cases were of this type. Childonly cases include
households in which the child(ren) is living with adults who are not their
parents, as well as cases where the parents are in the household but ineligible
for benefits. Today, there are wide variations among the states with
regard to childonly cases: they make up approximately 40% of
Alabama’s caseload but only 8 percent of Maine’s caseload.
Currently there is only a limited understanding of the causes of the growth
in childonly cases, the dynamics of these cases and how they differ
from cases with adult recipients, and how the characteristics of families
differ. It is expected that such cases are likely to remain TANF recipients
for longer periods of time than other cases. The interactions between
state policies and the formation of childonly cases will be among the
issues examined, as will exit issues, such as when do such cases exit the
TANF rolls and why, and how do exits of childonly cases compare to
exits for other cases.
This study, conducted by the Lewin Group under contract to ASPE, is using
administrative data, case file reviews, and interviews with case workers
and policy staff in three states (California, Florida, and Missouri) to examine
policy and programmatic issues regarding childonly cases. The
study is designed to obtain more detailed information about the make-up and
trends in the childonly population in these states. The study
will concentrate on Alameda County in California and Kansas City in Missouri;
the focus in Florida remains to be determined.
Estimated Completion Date: Site visits will be conducted during
the summer of 1999 and a report is expected by the end of 1999.
This project is organizing into a data archive the Characteristics Surveys
of AFDC Recipients (that were carried out every two years from 1967 through
1979) and the annual AFDC Quality Control administrative data (collected
from 1982 through 1996). These data will allow comparisons between
the TANF program and its predecessor AFDC program to see what changes have
occurred. The Urban Institute will make these data files consistent,
as well as clean up, document, and publish these data on the Internet for
use by researchers wishing to compare the new world of welfare reform with
the old world of AFDC, among other uses.
Estimated Completion Date: October 1999
1. The Administration for Children and Families
is funding two separate implementation studies in South Carolina —
one on substance abuse and the other on re-location of families from economically
depressed areas in the state.
2. TRIM is a computer model used to simulate welfare
caseload changes resulting from changes in various policy variables.
Where to?
[ Report’s Main Page |
Introduction & Overview |
1999 Projects |
This Chapter |
Appendix A |
Appendix B ]
[ HSP Home Page |
ASPE Home Page |
HHS Home Page ]