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How State-Level Dynamics Shape Individual-Level Welfare Payments, Jamy Rentschler

Department of Sociology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines how welfare program implementation varies across states, and what those differences in implementation mean for welfare (TANF) recipients across the country. Specifically, I examine the extent to which state-level context related demographics and economics as well as political ideology, religious culture and race may contribute to contemporary disparate economic outcomes for low-income racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. This study relies on a sample of welfare recipients from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) during 1998-2013 to examine individual recipients’ average monthly TANF payments. Analyses combine SIPP data with state-level information drawn from …