Submitted by:
Gregory Acs, Pamela Loprest
with
Tracy Roberts
The Urban Institute
2100 M Street, NW
Washington, DC 20037
Federal Project Officer:
Matthew Lyon
November 27, 2001
This project was funded by the US Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation under task order number 8 under contract HHS-100-99-0003. The authors would like to thank Romina Woldermarian for research assistance and Sandi Nelson for helpful comments. The views expressed in this report are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Urban Institute or its sponsors.
Chapter II: The Context for ASPE-funded Leaver Studies
Chapter III: Employment and Earnings
Chapter IV: Program Participation
Chapter VI: Material hardship and Relative Well-Being
Chapter VII: Child Well-Being and Child Care
Tables
Figures
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), passed in 1996, replaced the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grants to states. Since that time, the federal cash assistance caseloads have dropped by over 50 percent, from 4.4 million in August, 1996 to 2.1 million in March, 2001. There is interest at the federal, state, and local levels in better understanding the circumstances of the unprecedented number of families that have left welfare, including their employment status, participation in public programs, and the overall well-being of both the leavers and their children.
A host of state and policy researchers have examined the well-being of families leaving welfare in the post-reform era. These studies vary widely in the populations they study, how they define a welfare leaver, the outcomes that they examine and how those outcomes are measured, and in their methodological rigor. Consequently, it is difficult to use these studies to draw general conclusions about the status of TANF leavers nationwide.
In an effort to address the above questions about the circumstances of welfare leavers and to facilitate cross-state comparisons, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) of the United States the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) awarded competitive grants to select states and large counties in September, 1998, to conduct studies of families that have left the welfare rolls. This report reviews and synthesizes key findings from fifteen of the ASPE-funded leavers studies.
The studies, made possible by an earmarked Congressional appropriation to study the outcomes of welfare reform, include both administrative and survey data on the well-being of families who left welfare. This synthesis includes information on welfare leavers employment and earnings, public assistance program participation, income and poverty status, material hardships, and child well-being. In addition to publishing reports, grantees constructed public-use files containing state or county administrative data and/or survey data. Public use data from several of the sites are analyzed in this report to examine key outcomes for subgroups that may not have been included in the grantees published reports.
Following the devolution of welfare programs to the state level, ASPE chose a research strategy that combined local flexibility in study design with some efforts to develop comparable measures across the studies in order to facilitate cross-study comparisons. There remain important differences in welfare policies, economic conditions, and the characteristics of leavers across the fifteen study areas that may affect leavers post-TANF experiences. However, despite these differences, some clear general patterns emerge.
Major findings for each area are summarized below. The figures in this executive summary show the range of findings reported across the fifteen studies, focusing on the minimum, maximum, and median point of these ranges. Results for individual states appear in the full report.
Encouraging families to move off welfare and into jobs is a goal of welfare reform. All fifteen studies collected some information about employment rates and earnings, wages, and/or employer-related benefits of families that left welfare. The major findings in this area across these studies are:
The graph shows the minimum, maximum, and median employment rates as reported across the studies. Not all studies provide data for all post-exit quarters. The data here represent the percentage of leavers employed in the first and fourth quarters after exit, the percentage who ever worked (employed in at least one of the four quarters after exit) and the percentage who worked in all quarters. See Table III.1 of the Final Synthesis Report for more details.
The graph shows the minimum, maximum, and median employment rates as reported across the studies. Not all studies provide data for all post-exit quarters. The data here represent the percentage of leavers employed in the first and fourth quarters after exit, the percentage who ever worked (employed in at least one of the four quarters after exit) and the percentage who worked in all quarters. See Table III.1 of the Final Synthesis Report for more details.
Non-TANF government assistance can help families in their transition from welfare to work. However, some families return to TANF. The major findings across studies on returns to TANF and participation in other public assistance programs are summarized below.
The graph shows the minimum, maximum, and median TANF return rates as reported for the first four post-exit quarters across the studies. Not all studies provide data for all post-exit quarters. See Table IV.1 of the Final Synthesis Report for more details.
The graph shows the minimum, maximum, and median food stamp receipt
rates as reported for the first four post-exit quarters across the studies.
Not all studies provide data for all post-exit quarters. See
Table IV.3 of the Final Synthesis Report for
more details.
The graph shows the minimum, maximum, and median adult Medicaid coverage rates as reported for the first four post-exit quarters across the studies. Not all studies provide data for all post-exit quarters. See Table IV.7 of the Final Synthesis Report for more details.
Household income is an important indicator of the well-being of welfare leavers. Although such information is difficult to gather, a subset of studies examine income levels, sources of income, and poverty. Results for the subset of studies that examine these outcomes for the entire household are summarized below.
A number of leaver studies go beyond earnings, employment, income, and program participation and examine the extent to which leavers experience material hardships such as hunger and housing problems and whether these hardships are different for families on and off welfare. Key findings include:
Several studies report results on material hardship across subgroups of leavers, including workers and non-workers and those who left TANF due to sanction or time limits.
Although virtually all families leaving welfare have children, it is difficult to assess child well-being from either administrative data or a single interview. Thus, leaver studies contain limited information about children's outcomes and well-being. For the studies reporting this information, findings on children's health insurance coverage, health status, behavior, interaction with child welfare services, and child care arrangements are summarized below.
The fifteen ASPE-funded leaver studies reviewed here provide a considerable amount of information on the status of families leaving welfare. This synthesis focuses on key outcomes and measures of well-being that are commonly reported in these studies. In addition to these common elements, the individual studies also contain a rich array of information and subgroup analyses pertinent to understanding the status of former welfare recipients in their respective geographic areas.
Home Pages:
TANF Leavers, Applicants, and Caseload Studies
Human Services Policy (HSP)
Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation
(ASPE)
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
(HHS)
Last updated: 09/16/03