Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition (2001) / Chapter Skim
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1. Introduction
1. Introduction
Pages 13-23
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From page 13... ...
The legislation imposed several new major requirements on state programs lifetime time limits on receipt of benefits paid out of federal funds, minimum work requirements, and minimum sanction requirements, for example but otherwise allowed states to reconfigure their programs as they wish. Taking advantage of this new flexibility, states have made and continue to make major changes in the nature of their welfare programs.
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From page 14... ...
THE PANEL 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)
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From page 15... ...
In doing so, the panel was asked to consider alternative federal and state data sources, the limitations of currently available data, appropriate evaluation design and methods for analysis and inference, and, finally, findings from previous research and evaluation. The panel is also specifically charged with reviewing data needs and methods for tracking and assessing the effects of program changes on families who stop receiving cash assistance.
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From page 16... ...
Census Bureau to a meeting to discuss four major surveys relevant to evaluations of welfare reform: the Current Population Survey, the Survey of Income and Program Participation, the Survey of Program Dynamics, and the American Community Survey. In addition, the panel consulted a wide variety of private researchers and government officials involved in welfare reform research and commissioned a number of expert studies on welfare reform methods and data, which are included in the panel's companion volume (National Research Council, 2001a)
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From page 17... ...
INTRODUCTION 16,000 14,000 12,000 1 0,000 8000 6000 4000 2000 Z O 17 _ _,-_, _ ,. ~1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 19361940194419481952 19561960196419681972 19761980198419881992 Year FIGURE 1-1 Total Number of Cash Assistance (AFDC)
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From page 18... ...
Raising the financial incentive for working was not successful in increasing employment to any significant degree and was eliminated in the 1981 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, which effectively increased the benefit reduction rate back to 100 percent of net earnings. The WIN program remained small and provided little training to the majority of AFDC recipients.
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From page 19... ...
Equally if not more important, states were freed from other federal regulatory authority, and funding was switched from matching grants to block grants, thereby freeing states to set benefit levels, eligibility requirements, and financial incentives, and to enact sanction, diversion, and other types of rules and programs as they wished. The program was also renamed and is now called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
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From page 20... ...
This goal has been reinforced by changes in the nature of local welfare offices, as they attempt to change from mere eligibility-determining and cash-dispensing agencies to agencies whose primary mission is to assist recipients in moving from welfare to employment. This kind of fundamental restructuring of the welfare system cannot happen quickly, and at this writing, 4 years after the passage of the law, states are still developing their welfare programs and experimenting, often by trial-anderror, with different strategies for achieving employment, caseload-reduction and other program goals.
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From page 21... ...
A major research and evaluation issue has been how to parcel out the relative contributions of welfare reform, the economy, and the other policy developments to the decline in the caseload over this period. Most analysts attribute a sizable fraction of the decline in welfare recipients to welfare reforms, although methodological problems and data limitations create some uncertainty about this conclusion, an issue we discuss in Chapter 4.
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From page 22... ...
The growth of Medicaid, food stamps, supplemental security income (SSI) , and EITC spending over the past 30 years has been much more rapid than that for AFDC, and all four programs now have much greater expenditure levels than TANF and all of them except EITC had greater expenditures even prior to PRWoRA.3 Moreover, PRWORA had some provisions relating to programs other than TANF: immigrants were barred from Food Stamp receipt and strict time limits were imposed on some able-bodied program recipients without dependents; states were required to continue Medicaid eligibility for families that would have been eligible under the provisions of the pre-PRWORA AFDC program; and eligibility for SSI was restricted, with new income tests imposed and with certain types of child disabilities restricted.
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From page 23... ...
Chapter 5 characterizes the data needed to address the questions of interest and presents the panel's findings on the various national and state level data sources currently available. Chapter 6 presents and discusses the panel's recommendation for a centralization and reorganization of administrative authority and responsibility for federal and state data collection on social welfare programs and populations.
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