reforms was to “end welfare as we know it,” and most observers have agreed that the former AFDC system has been fundamentally transformed.

Determining the consequences of this experiment is of great importance to the public as well as legislators and federal and state officials. Has welfare reform “worked?” Has it been a success or a failure, however those terms are defined? If the effects have varied across families, for which types of families has it been beneficial and for which types harmful? In addition to these questions about the past, there are questions about the future. Should the welfare system be pushed further in the same direction or pulled back? Which elements of the new welfare system need to be changed and which left as is? What works and what doesn’t in aiding former welfare recipients to leave the rolls and become self-sufficient?

For these fundamental questions to be answered adequately, two issues need to be addressed. The first concerns how these questions can be answered: What methods can and should be used to determine the effects of welfare reform? Simply tracking families from before the reforms to after the reforms is not sufficient because other things have happened simultaneously, most notably the improvement in the economy. In the four years since PRWORA was passed, a large number of evaluation efforts have been initiated: Have those studies used the appropriate evaluation methods? If not, what evaluation methods should be used, and what steps should be taken to promote their use?

A second key issue concerns what types of data are needed to measure and evaluate the effects of welfare reform. Are the data sources currently available to evaluators at the federal and state levels adequate for assessing the effects of reform? In the many welfare reform studies that have been initiated since 1996, have the best data been used? Have the studies been handicapped by inadequate or unavailable data? If so, what steps should be taken to improve the quantity and quality of data needed to evaluate welfare reform?

These two issues are the subject of this report.

To answer questions about the methods and data needed to assess the consequences of welfare reform, the Committee on National Statistics of the National Research Council formed the Panel on Data and Methods for Measuring the Effects of Changes in Social Welfare Programs. This panel is sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through a congressional appropriation. The same congressional appropriation provided funding to ASPE for data collection and evaluation of the effects of welfare reform on families who have left welfare, commonly called “welfare leavers.” Language accompanying the appropriation requested that the panel provide guidance on the ASPE research

Front Matter (R1-R14)

Executive Summary (1-12)

1. Introduction (13-23)

2. Welfare Reform Monitoring and Evaluation: The Current Landscape (24-35)

3. Research Questions and Populations of Interest (36-53)

4. Evaluation Methods and Issues (54-101)

5. Data Needs and Issues (102-148)

6. Administrative Issues for Maintaining the Data Infrastructure (149-160)

References (161-170)

Appendix A: Major Current Welfare-Related Research Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (171-186)

Appendix B: Summary of Current Welfare Reform Projects (187-208)

Appendix C: The Statistical Power of National Data to Evaluate Welfare Reform (209-220)

Appendix D: Summaries of National-Level Survey Data Sets Relevant to Welfare Monitoring and Evaluation (221-234)

Biographical Sketches of Panel Members and Staff (235-240)

Index (241-253)