Welfare reform data from the survey of income and program participation

Monthly Labor Review

Volumn 124, Issue 7, 2001, Pages 13-21

  Bavier, Richard ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0005651602     PISSN: 00981818     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. State leavers studies are summarized in U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "Summary of Research on Welfare Outcomes Funded by ASPE: Administrative Data Findings from Interim Reports" (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, April 2000); and "Welfare Reform: Information on Former Recipients' Status," GAO/ HEHS-99-48 (U.S. General Accounting Office, April 1999). Also see Pamela Loprest, "Families Who Left Welfare: Who Are They and How Are They Doing?" Discussion Papers 99-02 (Washington, DC, The Urban Institute, 1999). Loprest presents information from the unique National Survey of American Families that asked 2-year retrospective welfare transition questions of a sample designed to provide State-level statistics for 13 States. A summary of research on the earnings of former welfare recipients and data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) are available in Maria Cancian, Robert Haveman, Thomas Kaplan, Daniel Meyer, and Barbara Wolfe, "Work, Earnings, and Well-Being after Welfare: What Do We Know," Joint Center for Poverty Research Working Paper no. 5 (February 1999). A rich dataset from a three-city study describes characteristics and distinguish levels of dependence among leavers in Robert Moffitt and Jennifer Roff, "The Diversity of Welfare Leavers," Policy Brief 00-2, Welfare, Children, and Families Study (Johns Hopkins University, August 2000).
2. State leavers studies are summarized in U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "Summary of Research on Welfare Outcomes Funded by ASPE: Administrative Data Findings from Interim Reports" (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, April 2000); and "Welfare Reform: Information on Former Recipients' Status," GAO/ HEHS-99-48 (U.S. General Accounting Office, April 1999). Also see Pamela Loprest, "Families Who Left Welfare: Who Are They and How Are They Doing?" Discussion Papers 99-02 (Washington, DC, The Urban Institute, 1999). Loprest presents information from the unique National Survey of American Families that asked 2-year retrospective welfare transition questions of a sample designed to provide State-level statistics for 13 States. A summary of research on the earnings of former welfare recipients and data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) are available in Maria Cancian, Robert Haveman, Thomas Kaplan, Daniel Meyer, and Barbara Wolfe, "Work, Earnings, and Well-Being after Welfare: What Do We Know," Joint Center for Poverty Research Working Paper no. 5 (February 1999). A rich dataset from a three-city study describes characteristics and distinguish levels of dependence among leavers in Robert Moffitt and Jennifer Roff, "The Diversity of Welfare Leavers," Policy Brief 00-2, Welfare, Children, and Families Study (Johns Hopkins University, August 2000).
3. State leavers studies are summarized in U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "Summary of Research on Welfare Outcomes Funded by ASPE: Administrative Data Findings from Interim Reports" (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, April 2000); and "Welfare Reform: Information on Former Recipients' Status," GAO/ HEHS-99-48 (U.S. General Accounting Office, April 1999). Also see Pamela Loprest, "Families Who Left Welfare: Who Are They and How Are They Doing?" Discussion Papers 99-02 (Washington, DC, The Urban Institute, 1999). Loprest presents information from the unique National Survey of American Families that asked 2-year retrospective welfare transition questions of a sample designed to provide State-level statistics for 13 States. A summary of research on the earnings of former welfare recipients and data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) are available in Maria Cancian, Robert Haveman, Thomas Kaplan, Daniel Meyer, and Barbara Wolfe, "Work, Earnings, and Well-Being after Welfare: What Do We Know," Joint Center for Poverty Research Working Paper no. 5 (February 1999). A rich dataset from a three-city study describes characteristics and distinguish levels of dependence among leavers in Robert Moffitt and Jennifer Roff, "The Diversity of Welfare Leavers," Policy Brief 00-2, Welfare, Children, and Families Study (Johns Hopkins University, August 2000).
4. State leavers studies are summarized in U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "Summary of Research on Welfare Outcomes Funded by ASPE: Administrative Data Findings from Interim Reports" (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, April 2000); and "Welfare Reform: Information on Former Recipients' Status," GAO/ HEHS-99-48 (U.S. General Accounting Office, April 1999). Also see Pamela Loprest, "Families Who Left Welfare: Who Are They and How Are They Doing?" Discussion Papers 99-02 (Washington, DC, The Urban Institute, 1999). Loprest presents information from the unique National Survey of American Families that asked 2-year retrospective welfare transition questions of a sample designed to provide State-level statistics for 13 States. A summary of research on the earnings of former welfare recipients and data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) are available in Maria Cancian, Robert Haveman, Thomas Kaplan, Daniel Meyer, and Barbara Wolfe, "Work, Earnings, and Well-Being after Welfare: What Do We Know," Joint Center for Poverty Research Working Paper no. 5 (February 1999). A rich dataset from a three-city study describes characteristics and distinguish levels of dependence among leavers in Robert Moffitt and Jennifer Roff, "The Diversity of Welfare Leavers," Policy Brief 00-2, Welfare, Children, and Families Study (Johns Hopkins University, August 2000).
5. State leavers studies are summarized in U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "Summary of Research on Welfare Outcomes Funded by ASPE: Administrative Data Findings from Interim Reports" (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, April 2000); and "Welfare Reform: Information on Former Recipients' Status," GAO/ HEHS-99-48 (U.S. General Accounting Office, April 1999). Also see Pamela Loprest, "Families Who Left Welfare: Who Are They and How Are They Doing?" Discussion Papers 99-02 (Washington, DC, The Urban Institute, 1999). Loprest presents information from the unique National Survey of American Families that asked 2-year retrospective welfare transition questions of a sample designed to provide State-level statistics for 13 States. A summary of research on the earnings of former welfare recipients and data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) are available in Maria Cancian, Robert Haveman, Thomas Kaplan, Daniel Meyer, and Barbara Wolfe, "Work, Earnings, and Well-Being after Welfare: What Do We Know," Joint Center for Poverty Research Working Paper no. 5 (February 1999). A rich dataset from a three-city study describes characteristics and distinguish levels of dependence among leavers in Robert Moffitt and Jennifer Roff, "The Diversity of Welfare Leavers," Policy Brief 00-2, Welfare, Children, and Families Study (Johns Hopkins University, August 2000).
6. See Richard Bavier, "An early look at the effects of welfare reform," manuscript, April 1999 and "A second look at the effects of welfare reform," presented at the December 1999 American Enterprise Institute conference, "Child Well Being Under Welfare Reform;" Wendell Primus, Lynette Rawlings, Kathy Larin, and Kathryn Porter, "The Initial Impacts of Welfare Reform on the Economic Well-Being of Single-Mother Families with Children" (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, August 1999); and Ron Haskins, "Welfare in a Society of Permanent Work," manuscript, December 1999. All of these studies present descriptive statistics from the March Current Population Survey and find post-1995 income declines in the bottom quintile of female family heads with children despite increased employment. In another study, Robert Schoeni and Rebecca Blank employ CPS data to estimate the impact of federal waivers and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 on welfare participation, employment, family formation, and income. See Robert Schoeni, and Rebecca Blank, "What Has Welfare Reform Accomplished? Impacts on Welfare Participation, Employment, Income, Poverty, and Family Structure," manuscript, February 2000.
7. See Richard Bavier, "An early look at the effects of welfare reform," manuscript, April 1999 and "A second look at the effects of welfare reform," presented at the December 1999 American Enterprise Institute conference, "Child Well Being Under Welfare Reform;" Wendell Primus, Lynette Rawlings, Kathy Larin, and Kathryn Porter, "The Initial Impacts of Welfare Reform on the Economic Well-Being of Single-Mother Families with Children" (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, August 1999); and Ron Haskins, "Welfare in a Society of Permanent Work," manuscript, December 1999. All of these studies present descriptive statistics from the March Current Population Survey and find post-1995 income declines in the bottom quintile of female family heads with children despite increased employment. In another study, Robert Schoeni and Rebecca Blank employ CPS data to estimate the impact of federal waivers and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 on welfare participation, employment, family formation, and income. See Robert Schoeni, and Rebecca Blank, "What Has Welfare Reform Accomplished? Impacts on Welfare Participation, Employment, Income, Poverty, and Family Structure," manuscript, February 2000.
8. See Richard Bavier, "An early look at the effects of welfare reform," manuscript, April 1999 and "A second look at the effects of welfare reform," presented at the December 1999 American Enterprise Institute conference, "Child Well Being Under Welfare Reform;" Wendell Primus, Lynette Rawlings, Kathy Larin, and Kathryn Porter, "The Initial Impacts of Welfare Reform on the Economic Well-Being of Single-Mother Families with Children" (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, August 1999); and Ron Haskins, "Welfare in a Society of Permanent Work," manuscript, December 1999. All of these studies present descriptive statistics from the March Current Population Survey and find post-1995 income declines in the bottom quintile of female family heads with children despite increased employment. In another study, Robert Schoeni and Rebecca Blank employ CPS data to estimate the impact of federal waivers and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 on welfare participation, employment, family formation, and income. See Robert Schoeni, and Rebecca Blank, "What Has Welfare Reform Accomplished? Impacts on Welfare Participation, Employment, Income, Poverty, and Family Structure," manuscript, February 2000.
9. See Richard Bavier, "An early look at the effects of welfare reform," manuscript, April 1999 and "A second look at the effects of welfare reform," presented at the December 1999 American Enterprise Institute conference, "Child Well Being Under Welfare Reform;" Wendell Primus, Lynette Rawlings, Kathy Larin, and Kathryn Porter, "The Initial Impacts of Welfare Reform on the Economic Well-Being of Single-Mother Families with Children" (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, August 1999); and Ron Haskins, "Welfare in a Society of Permanent Work," manuscript, December 1999. All of these studies present descriptive statistics from the March Current Population Survey and find post-1995 income declines in the bottom quintile of female family heads with children despite increased employment. In another study, Robert Schoeni and Rebecca Blank employ CPS data to estimate the impact of federal waivers and the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 on welfare participation, employment, family formation, and income. See Robert Schoeni, and Rebecca Blank, "What Has Welfare Reform Accomplished? Impacts on Welfare Participation, Employment, Income, Poverty, and Family Structure," manuscript, February 2000.
10. The analysis follows the convention of counting only status changes lasting 2 months or more. Among leavers studies, Loprest "Families Who Left Welfare," 1999, uses a 1-month status change while the Health and Human Services study, "Summary of Research on Welfare Outcomes Funded by ASPE," 2000, explains that the approach it sponsored "excludes cases that re-open within 1 or 2 months, because such cases are more related to administrative 'churning' than to true exits from welfare." Short spells off the rolls clearly are not "true exits from welfare" if that means permanent exits, though they may be part of an exit process that involves one or more returns before a long-term exit. Whether short exits are of analytical interest remains to be seen. The leavers studies that Health and Human Services summarizes usually exclude "child-only" cases, in which the needs of the adult caretaker are not included in the grant. See Health and Human Services, "Summary of Research on Welfare Outcomes Funded by ASPE," 2000, table 1. Through most of the 1996 panel, it was not possible to distinguish child-only cases from others. Welfare leavers who are not the biological, adoptive, or step parents of any children covered by the grant, or who receive SSI, are likely to be heads of child-only cases. When such leavers are excluded, employment patterns are similar and return rates slightly higher.
11. The Census Bureau plans to release a complete longitudinal file from the 1996 panel in 2001. To support longitudinal analysis, longitudinal weights will be applied for persons who are in the sample at the beginning and also at the end of the panel. Analysis using these weights will not include persons who are lost to the sample before the end, or who enter sample households in the middle. This approach simplifies weighting and is necessary if longitudinal analysis requires all 48-panel months, but for cross-sectional analysis, or longitudinal analysis of shorter periods, fewer weighted sample cases are available for analysis than when wave files and weights are employed. The cohort of 1996-97 leavers used in this article includes 178 persons, or 15 percent of all 1,178 observed leavers, who either were not in the sample in the first wave or not still in the sample in month 36.
12. Health and Human Services, "Summary of Research on Welfare Outcomes Funded by ASPE," 2000, table 2.
13. Gary Burtless, "Can the Labor Market Absorb Three Million Welfare Recipients?" (Washington, DC, The Brookings Institution, March 2000), third draft.
14. Standard errors were estimated by generalized variance parameters provided in SIPP documentation by the Bureau of the Census.
15. Welfare receipt is measured as variable R20=1. Exit month employment is measured in longitudinal files as the employment status recode variable ESR greater or equal to 1 and less than or equal to 5. For the 1993 and 1996 wave files, employment status means at least 1 week in the month with a job, as measured by variable RMWKWJB. The decline in exit-month employment in 1998 and 1999 is not paralleled by a decline in the mean number of months worked in the post-exit year.
16. Health and Human Services, "Summary of Research on Welfare Outcomes Funded by ASPE," 2000, table 4.
17. Toby Herr, Robert Halpern, with Aimee Conrad, "Changing What Counts: Re-Thinking the Journey Out of Welfare" (Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research, Northwestern University, April 1991).
18. Health and Human Services, "Summary of Research on Welfare Outcomes Funded by ASPE," 2000, tables 2 and 3.
19. Cancian, and others "Work, Earnings, and Well-Being after Welfare," 1999, table 2.
20. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, "Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Program, Third Annual Report to Congress" (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, August 2000), chapt. XIV.
21. Moffitt and Roff, "The Diversity of Welfare Leavers," 2000.
22. To estimate the marginal effects of predictors on the probability of being an income loser, the logit parameter estimates were applied to the binary values of the corresponding variables of each sample leaver. See William H. Greene, Econometric Analysis, Third Edition (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, Prentice Hall, 1997).
23. Nicholas Zill, Kristin A. Moore, Christine Winquist Nord, and Thomas Stief, "Welfare Mothers as Potential Employees: A Statistical Profile Based on National Survey Data" (Washington, DC, Child Trends Inc., February 1991).
24. Eleanor Lyon, "Poverty, Welfare and Battered Women: What does the research tell us?" (Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice (rev.), January 1998).
25. Also see, Gene Falk and Alice Butler, "Welfare Reform: The Characteristics of TANF Families in FY 1999," RL30951 (Congressional Research Service, May 2001).
26. Sec. 408(a)(7) of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 prohibits federally funded assistance to a family that includes an adult who has received assistance for 60 months under the State's TANF program. However, a number of exceptions are provided, including exemption of up to 20 percent of the State's average monthly caseload for a fiscal year.
27. Maria Cancian, Robert Haveman, Daniel Meyer, and Barbara Wolfe, "Before and After TANF: The Economic Well-Being of Women Leaving Welfare" (Madison, WI, Institute for Research on Poverty May 2000).
28. Bavier, "A second look at the effects of welfare reform," 1999; and Primus and others, "The Initial Impacts of Welfare Reform," 1999.
29. Bavier, "A second look at the effects of welfare reform," 1999; and Primus and others, "The Initial Impacts of Welfare Reform," 1999.
30. Note that, unlike the preceding analysis of a cohort of leavers, the analysis of the place of leavers in the income distribution is not limited to recipients who leave for at least 2 months and can be observed for at least 12 post-exit months within the first 36 months of the panel. Rather, a female family head is classified as a leaver if she received AFCD/ TANF at any earlier point in the panel and is in the sample, but not receiving AFDC/TANF in the month of measurement.