Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Welfare Reform And The Intergenerational Transmission Of Dependence, Robert Paul Hartley, Carlos Lamarche, James P. Ziliak

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

We estimate the effect of welfare reform on the intergenerational transmission of welfare participation using a long panel of mother-daughter pairs over the survey period 1968-2013 in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Because states implemented welfare reform at different times starting in 1992, the cross-state variation over time permits us to quasi-experimentally separate out the effect of mothers’ participation on daughters’ welfare choice in the pre- and post-welfare reform periods. Our empirical framework also addresses potential issues in identifying a causal pathway from parent to child that arise from correlated unobservables in welfare decisions, misclassification error in survey reports, …

Uncontrolled Experiments From The Laboratories Of Democracy: Traditional Cash Welfare, Federalism, And Welfare Reform, Jonah B. Gelbach

All Faculty Scholarship

In this chapter I discuss the history and basic incentive effects of two key U.S. cash assistance programs aimed at families with children. Starting roughly in the 1980s, critics of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program argued that the program -- designed largely to cut relatively small checks -- failed to end poverty or promote work. After years of federally provided waivers that allowed states to experiment with changes to their AFDC programs, the critics in 1996 won the outright elimination of AFDC. It was replaced by the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program, over which …

Deputized Brokers: A Technique For A Case Study Of Conservative Think Tanks In 1990s Welfare Reform, Sergio Romero

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study proposes a novel analytical technique in a case study of think tank brokerage. As brokers, think tanks structurally link foundations and media, yet they do so as representatives of a policy network consisting of corporate funders and affiliated think tanks. Print media sought their policy analysis regarding the welfare system and prescriptions for reform. Network and content methods are the bases for the presentation of the technique. The coupling of results from each of the technique's components shows how resources tie actors, as well as how their conversion from one form to another is the basis for a …

“Documenting The Untold Stories Of Feminist Activists At Welfare Rights Initiative: A Digital Oral History Archive Project.”, Cynthia Tobar

Publications and Research

This chapter recounts the creation of a digital oral history archive documenting the Welfare Rights Initiative (WRI), a grassroots student activist and community leadership training organization located at Hunter College. The author examines, through these oral history interviews, social movement activity at the level of a grassroots organization as exemplified by WRI, which was developed to aid student welfare recipients to become agents of social change and actively involve them with policymaking. The project depicts the experiences of members in this feminist grassroots organization and provides us with new insights to the origins of advocacy, documenting the singular historical importance …

Was There A ‘Race To The Bottom’ After Welfare Reform?, Sarah K. Burns

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Leading up to the passage of the 1996 welfare reform, there was much speculation and debate over the possibility that states would "race to the bottom" in setting welfare generosity if given more control over their individual programs. In the fifteen years after welfare reform, did such a race to the bottom ensue? Using a spatial dynamic econometric approach I investigate welfare competition across multiple policy instruments and across three distinct welfare periods - the AFDC regime, the experimental waiver period leading up to the reform, and the TANF era. Results suggest strategic policy setting occurs over multiple dimensions of …

Pledge Your Body For Your Bread: Welfare, Drug Testing, And The Inferior Fourth Amendment, Jordan C. Budd

Law Faculty Scholarship

Proposals to subject welfare recipients to periodic drug testing have emerged over the last three years as a significant legislative trend across the United States. Since 2007, over half of the states have considered bills requiring aid recipients to submit to invasive extraction procedures as an ongoing condition of public assistance. The vast majority of the legislation imposes testing without regard to suspected drug use, reflecting the implicit assumption that the poor are inherently predisposed to culpable conduct and thus may be subject to class-based intrusions that would be inarguably impermissible if inflicted on the less destitute. These proposals are …

Welfare-To-Work Programs In America, 1980 To 2005: Meta-Analytic Evidence Of The Importance Of Job And Child Care Availability, Kevin M. Gorey

Social Work Publications

This meta-analysis extended a Campbell Collaboration review of welfare-to-work programs. Its synthesis of 65 randomized trials in America over the past generation replicated a small overall intervention effect. Moreover, it found (1) there was no long-term employment effect of interventions in areas where jobs were relatively unavailable, and (2) programs that provided child care were more effective than those that did not in the short and long term, even in areas of high labor market withdrawal. The availability of jobs as well as such supports as child care that enable their access seem to be key elements of welfare-to-work programs …

Distributing Discipline: Race, Politics, And Punishment At The Frontlines Of Welfare Reform, Richard Fording, Joe Soss, Sanford F. Schram

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Numerous studies have confirmed that race plays an important role in shaping public preferences toward both redistribution and punishment. Likewise, studies suggest that punitive policy tools tend to be adopted by state governments in a pattern that tracks with the racial composition of state populations. Such evidence testifies to the enduring power of race in American politics, yet it has limited value for understanding how disciplinary policies get applied to individuals in implementation settings. To illuminate the relationship between race and the application of punitive policy tools, we analyze sanction patterns in the TANF program. Drawing on a model of …

Welfare Reform And Juvenile Arrests, Tami Gurley-Calvez, Bethany Claus Widick

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Social policy, such as the legalization of abortion and the federal bans on lead in the 1970s, has been shown to significantly impact crime rates. With recent increases in juvenile arrests and violent crime rates, we explore whether further social policy—namely the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) welfare reform—has had an impact on crime.

There are various mechanisms by which the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, created by the 1996 PRWORA welfare reform, may influence criminal activity, especially among older children. Many welfare recipients were required to participate in work and education activities, which …

Does Welfare Reform Work In Rural America? A 7-Year Follow-Up, Ann Tickamyer, Debra Henderson, Barry Tadlock

University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research Discussion Paper Series

Even before the advent of welfare reform, studies of low income working and welfare dependent groups showed that low wage working women are worse off than those who combine welfare with other income sources and that most used a wide variety of livelihood strategies. This is especially the case in poor rural settings where work is scarce and additional obstacles to employment such as lack of transportation and childcare are endemic. Data from a selfadministered survey of users of human service agency programs in four counties in a distressed region of Appalachian Ohio in 1999, 2001, and 2005, provide a …

A Policy Brief: Massachusetts (T)Afdc Case Closings, October 1993-August 1997, Donna Friedman, Emily Douglas, Michelle Hayes, Mary Ann Allard

Center for Social Policy Publications

When a DTA (Department of Transitional Assistance) worker assesses whether a family's (T)AFDC (Temporary Aid to Families with Dependent Children) case will be closed, s/he decides which one of 67 different codes best describes the reason cash benefits for the household will be stopped. To carry out the analyses, we sorted all of the 67 codes into clusters of codes that logically grouped together: Cluster I, Increased Income; Cluster H, Sanctions; Cluster III, Eligible Persons Moved; Cluster IV, Fraud; Cluster V, Client Request; Cluster VI, No Longer Eligible; Cluster VII, Other or Multiple Meanings. The Appendix displays a description of …