The Behavioral Effects of Welfare Time Limits

Among the changes in U.S. poverty policy coming about from the end of “welfare as we knew it” has been an imposition of time limits on the receipt of federal welfare funds. Yet little is known about the impact this restriction will have. This paper examines welfare dynamics under Aid to Families with Dependent Children to provide a sense of magnitude of the number of families that would have been at risk of exhausting their eligibility for federal funds in the past. In addition, simulation models are employed to assess whether these results are sensitive to changes in key variables, some of which are within the grasp of policy makers, others of which are not. (JEL 13, J1)

Although the combined value of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) guarantees and food stamps has been declining in real terms, national data from the March Current Population Survey show that the economic status of families with members receiving AFDC has improved since the mid-1980s. This pattern holds in monthly survey data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, and in expenditure data for cash welfare families with children in the Consumer Expenditure Survey. On average, earnings have increased while net taxes and other non-medical transfers have offset the decay of AFDC.

Welfare reform: Unanticipated but inevitable consequences for health insurance coverage for the poor

Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this article expands upon earlier empirical efforts to understand intergenerational welfare participation in the United States. Empirical studies have suggested that growing up in a household that receives Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) increases the probability that a child will receive AFDC, although little insight exists on the dynamics of this relationship. In particular, no one has formally examined how the time a daughter spends on AFDC varies from the time her parents receive welfare. By observing the behavior of parents and their daughters for five years, this study examines the length of participation in AFDC across generations. The results imply that growing up in a household that receives AFDC increases the amount of time that a daughter will also receive aid, although the time a daughter receives AFDC is not affected by the length of time parents receive AFDC.

Uncontrolled Experiments from the Laboratories of Democracy: Traditional Cash Welfare, Federalism, and Welfare Reform

One of the methods of increased privacy protection is the creation of synthetic data sets. In this article we consider the differences that emerge between synthetic and nonsynthetic data in one of the very few attempts to create a synthetic data file for a major household survey data set, the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). The data we use are nonsynthetic and synthetic versions of the SIPP linked to administrative earnings histories, known as the SIPP Gold Standard File (GSF) and the SIPP Synthetic Beta (SSB), respectively. We present a set of results on short-run earnings dynamics estimated on both the SSB and the GSF, focusing on earnings volatility—the variance of short-run earnings growth rates—as well as an error components decomposition of inequality into permanent and transitory components. We find that short-run instability—both volatility and the transitory component of earnings inequality—is higher in the SSB than the GSF although the differences are somewhat dependent on modeling choices and the treatment of low earnings. Differences between the two data sets emerge both because cross-sectional inequality is higher in the SSB than in the GSF and because the dynamics of earnings over both shorter and longer periods appear to be different.

This study investigates the effect of the Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) program on children's health outcomes using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation over the period 1994 to 2005. The TANF policies have been credited with increased employment for single mothers and a dramatic drop in welfare caseload. Our results show that these policies also had a significant effect on various measures of children's medical utilization among low-income families. These health measures include a rating of the child's health status reported by the parents, the number of times that parents consulted a doctor, and the number of nights that the child stayed in a hospital. We compare the overall changes of health status and medical utilization for children with working and nonworking mothers. We find that the child's health status as reported by the parents is affected by the maternal employment status.

Research on economic need in the United States dates back at least to Jacob Riis's classic 1890 book, How the Other Half Lives. In the century since that publication, government efforts to reduce poverty have expanded enormously. Along with the expansion of anti-poverty programs, the demand for research on the nature of economic need in this country has mushroomed. A primary motivation for beginning the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) was to provide more and better information on families' level of eco­ nomic need and their use of government programs. This paper analyzes the ex­ tent to which SIPP has fulfilled that promise and presents recommendations for further changes and improvements in SIPP that might make it more useful to those who want to investigate poverty and anti-poverty programs. Data on income and program participation serve four basic functions in un­ derstanding poverty. First, income statistics are used to calculate measures of economic need, such as the official poverty rate, which are used as a measure of economic and social progress. Second, comparative measures of economic need across different subgroups of the population provide a measure of the relative progress and well-being of different groups in society, and help focus attention on those whose needs remain unmet. Third, data on program partici­ pation and family income provide information on who receives government transfer income and on how effective these programs are in reducing economic need. Fourth, repeated observations over time provide evidence on how all of these issues evolve. In particular, as anti-poverty programs and the macro

This article uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to answer two questions raised in the recent debate over welfare reform: (1) Is the length of time that a woman receives Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) associated with the likelihood ofpermanently leaving AFDC? (2) Are marital status, childbearing, and qualifications for work associated with permanently leaving AFDC? We define a permanent exit as leaving the AFDC rolls and not returning within two years. The answer to the first question is that the likelihood ofpermanently leaving AFDC decreases with the length of time that women receive benefits after adjusting for other attributes of individuals and their families. This finding is robust across several, but not all, specifications of the model of permanent exits. The answer to the second question is that marital status, the number of children, and qualifications for work as well as the availability of employment, are associated with the likelihood of leaving AFDC permanently. The effects of these characteristics are robust across all of the different specifications used in the analysis

Disability data inform resource allocation and utilization, characterize functioning and changes over time, and provide a mechanism to monitor progress toward promoting and protecting the rights of individuals with disability. Data collection efforts, however, define and measure disability in varied ways. Our objective was to see how the content of disability measures differed in five US national surveys and over time. Using the WHO ICF as a conceptual framework for measuring disability, we assessed the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), Current Population Survey (CPS), Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), National Survey of SSI Children and Families (NSCF), and American Community Survey (ACS) for their content coverage of disability relative to each of the four ICF components (i.e., body functions, body structures, activities and participation, and environment). We used second-level ICF three-digit codes to classify question content into categories within each ICF component and computed the proportion of categories within each ICF component that was represented in the questions selected from these five surveys. The disability measures varied across surveys and years. The NHIS captured a greater proportion of the ICF body functions and body structures components than did other surveys. The SIPP captured the most content of the ICF activities and participation component, and the NSCF contained the most content of the ICF environmental factors component. This research successfully illustrated demonstrated the utility of the ICF in examining the content of disability measures in five national surveys and over time.

The dynamics of participation in government programs can be studied using longitudinal data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). This paper examines some of the issues involved in such analysis, focusing first on the kinds of analysis that SIPP data allow. The second section discusses the major problems with the SIPP that complicate longitudinal analyses. A concluding section suggests changes that could simplify and improve the data.

The self-reported number of workdays missed due to injury or illness, or sick days, is a reliable measure of health among working-aged adults. Although sick days is a relatively underexplored health-related outcome in migration studies, it can provide a multidimensional understanding of immigrant wellbeing and integration. Current understandings of the association between migration status and sick days are limited for two reasons. First, in the United States, few nationally representative surveys collect migration status information. Second, researchers lack consensus on the most reliable approach for assigning migration status. We use the 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) to examine sick days and draw comparisons between two methods for assigning migration status—a logical approach and a survey approach. The logical method assigns migration status to foreign-born respondents based on characteristics such as government employment or welfare receipt, while the survey approach relies on self-reported survey responses. Sick days among immigrants was correlated with and predicted by other health conditions available in the SIPP. Comparisons of sick days by migration status vary based on migration assignment approach. Lawful Permanent Residents (LPRs) reported more sick days than non-LPRs and appear less healthy when migration status is assigned using the logical approach. The logical approach also produced a gap in sick days between LPRs and non-LPRs that is not replicated in the survey approach. The results demonstrate that if migration status is not measured directly in the data, interpretation of migration status effects should proceed cautiously.

Using data from the youngest cohorts of women in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this study constructs Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) histories starting at age 15. Most young women go on AFDC for the first time between ages 18 and 25 and do so in the first few years after the birth of their first baby. These histories are used to estimate models of the determinants of initial use of AFDC. The models provide mixed evidence that the financial or other incentives of welfare policy affect the likelihood and timing of AFDC use. Benefit levels do not seem to affect participation, but the presence of a program for medically needy families who are not on welfare appears to decrease entrance to welfare for some groups. Parental poverty, family structure, academic achievement, attitudes toward school, and race are significantly related to the likelihood of participating in AFDC, and the rate of entry. © 2000 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

This document re-examines the effect of Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC) benefits on early nonmarital childbearing based on recent research by Mark Rosenzweig. In his studies Rosenzweig finds that AFDC benefits have a statistically significant and quantitatively large positive effect on early nonmarital fertility. His analysis differed in three important ways: 1) it included fertility through age 22; 2) it incorporated a marital birth as a separate choice; and 3) it included both state and cohort fixed effects to control for unmeasured characteristics that may influence early fertility. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics the researchers were able to reproduce Rosenzweigs main finding that AFDC generosity influences nonmarital childbearing when state and cohort fixed-effects are included. However model specification matters significantly. Estimates of AFDC effects on early nonmarital births are very sensitive to inclusion of state effects and also to the exact specification of the state fixed effect. Findings in this study highlighted several issues for future research.

Although the importance of reading comprehension is generally recognized, a better understanding of the factors influencing measurement of reading comprehension may impact the ability to assess strengths and deficits. The current study examined the effects of text type and time limits on the rate of students' performance across four common assessments of reading comprehension. Results showed similarities between performance with narrative and expository texts and across time limit conditions for all of the assessments. In terms of comparing across reading comprehension assessments, the findings are limited by the differences in the response channels and stimulus conditions of each assessment. The results have implications for the development of measurement systems and the assessment of reading comprehension.