Moving into Adulthood: Were the Impacts of Mandatory Programs for Welfare-Dependent Teenaged Parents Sustained After the Programs Ended?

Submitted by:

Project Director: Ellen Eliason Kisker

Submitted to:

Project Officer: Reuben Snipper

Contract No.: HHH 100-86-0045

MPR Reference No.: 7700-270

Disclaimer

This report was prepared for the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, under contract HHS-86-0045.  Since researchers conducting projects under government sponsorship are encouraged to express their own judgments freely, this report does not necessarily represent the official opinion or policy of the Department of Health and Human Services.  The results of this study and the views expressed are solely those of the authors.

Acknowledgments

Many people contributed in significant ways to the second phase of the evaluation and preparation of this report. Much of the information on the demonstration programs that is summarized in this report was provided by Melba McCarty, Yvonne Johnson, and Frank Ambrose, who oversaw the demonstration programs -- Project Advance in Chicago, Teen Progress in Newark, and Teen Progress in Camden, respectively. Bonnie Mecanko and David Heinz of the New Jersey Department of Human Services, John Bock of the New Jersey Department of Labor, and Denise Simon, David Gruenenfelder, and Susan Fitzpatrick of the Illinois Department of Public Aid were very helpful during the data collection process.

Reuben Snipper, Project Officer for the evaluation, and Nancye Campbell, Project Officer for the demonstration programs, provided helpful guidance throughout the design and implementation of the evaluation. Rebecca Maynard, Project Director and co-investigator for the first phase of the evaluation, provided critical guidance as we designed the second phase of the evaluation, and she offered valuable insights as we prepared this report.

Many other staff members at Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., contributed to the project and the development of this report. John Love and Christine Ross designed the child assessment instruments and provided valuable guidance to us in analyzing the data and preparing the report. Todd Ensor directed the second follow-up survey data collection, with important help from Susan Sprachman, Barbara Rogers, Jim Cashion, Cindy Steenstra, Janet Buffer, and Wendy Offery. Mike Watts and Linda Bandeh did the programming for the computer-assisted telephone interviewing. Catherine Brown, Anne Bloomenthal, Lara Hulsey, and Tim Novak constructed the data files and prepared the tabulations and graphs for the report. Jennifer Baskwell, Cindy Castro, Jill Miller, and Marjorie Mitchell produced the report. Patricia Ciaccio and Roy Grisham edited the report.

Finally, the mothers in the sample and their children patiently answered our many questions.

We gratefully acknowledge these contributions and accept sole responsibility for any remaining errors or omissions in the report.

Full report

The full report can be downloaded as a self-extracting file (the self-extracting file is 2,153,786 bytes in size).  When extracted, the report consists of about 138 Word Perfect and Power Point files and uses about 6 MB of disk space.