Background: Social experiments frequently exploit data from administrative records. However, most administrative data systems are designed to track earnings or benefit payments among residents within a single state. When an experimental participant moves across state lines, his entries in the data system of his state of origin consist entirely of…

This article examines the employment and child care responses of families participating in 10 experimental welfare reform programs conducted in the United States between 1989 and 2002. For the programs analyzed, child care use increases by about the same amount as the increase in employment. Most of the increased child care comprises informal care…

This article demonstrates a novel application of propensity score matching techniques: to estimate nonexperimental impacts on program participants within the context of an experimental research design. The author examines the relationship between program participation, defined as qualifying for an earnings supplement by working full-time, and…