Temporary Assistance to Needy Families offers welfare recipients a second chance for success. How good that chance will be depends on the next version of the legislation. If its work requirements do not allow for sufficient training, achieving success may be more difficult. (Author/JOW)

Discusses the challenges facing evaluators of welfare reform and the ways that multiple methods can be combined to meet these challenges. Describes the studies reported in this issue. (Author/SLD)

Examined the impact of 1996 welfare reform legislation on immigrants' welfare use. Nationally, immigrants' welfare participation rates declined relative to those of natives. This trend was attributable to trends in welfare participation in California, where immigrants experienced a precipitous drop in participation rates. Much of the potential…

Examines gaps in child support among welfare recipients in Wisconsin. Documented is the extent to which breakdowns at various stages--including paternity establishment, support orders, and payments--contribute to the low rate of child support receipt. Few welfare recipients are able to successfully negotiate the child support system, and mothers…

Describes an accelerated nursing program put together by Fort Range Community College and four other state agencies to assist single mothers in getting off welfare. (JOW)

Developed motivation training program which systematically employed four methods for changing self-efficacy (performance accomplishment, verbal persuasion, emotional arousal, vicarious learning/modeling) among 183 recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children who were referred to Hawaii's Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Programs.…

Discusses relation of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) to problems of unwed motherhood. Shows that extension of AFDC to unwed mothers was unintended development and has been demise of residential homes for unwed mothers. Urges renewed attention be given to public support of maternity homes as means of socializing young mothers and…

Subsidized employment had substantial and long-lived effects on earnings and welfare benefits in a study of more than 9,000 welfare recipients 3 years after program entry. Although not always cost effective for taxpayers, subsidized employment had positive net benefits for participants and society. (SK)

A study of 2325 inner-city teenage mothers receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children for the first time found they have longer welfare spells and higher recidivism rates than other groups of female welfare recipients. Those with higher skills are more likely to find work and less likely to return to welfare. (SK)

Estimates of the level of women's full-time employment are greatly affected by the choice of reference period and population. As states attempt to move poor mothers from welfare to work, a tendency may arise to overestimate how much mothers of young children work for pay. (Author)

Studied the likelihood of obtaining employment for job training participants and nonparticipants and the types of jobs women obtained. Results for 150 treatment (job training) and 530 control cases show a differential training effect for full- and part-time workers and little or no effect of job training on a disadvantaged woman's probability of…

We hypothesize that the social support available from low-income networks serves primarily a coping function, rather than a leverage function. Social support and its relationship to material well-being is assessed in a sample of 632 former and current welfare recipients. Respondents report higher levels of perceived emotional, instrumental, and…

This three-year longitudinal study investigated whether low-wage employment was associated with improved psychological and parenting outcomes in a sample of 178 single mothers who were employed and unemployed current and former welfare recipients both before and subsequent to the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity…

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 chapter describes the educational possible selves of low-income mothers as they make the transition from welfare to work.