This brief uses data from the first two waves of the National Survey of America's Families to examine how living arrangements for families with children changed between 1997-99. During the late 1990s, welfare reform efforts centered on moving families from welfare to work. Lost in the discussions of declining caseloads and post-welfare employment…

One of a series planned by Child Trends to help inform the public debate surrounding the 2002 reauthorization of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant, this brief updates a statistical snapshot of working poor families with children that Child Trends published 2 years ago. Findings presented in the brief include the…

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) gives states the flexibility to design programs to help low-income families move into employment. However, the law discourages states from allowing welfare recipients to participate in education and training programs. Because the law limits the extent to which education activities count toward federal…

The advent of welfare reform in the United States has provided new challenges in preparing adults to become economically self-sufficient. As one response to this challenge, the National Center for Family Literacy (NCFL) in Louisville, Kentucky began the Family Independence Initiative in 1997 to promote family literacy as one solution for assisting…

Analyzed whether parents' receipt of welfare affected children's educational attainment in early adulthood, independent of its effect through changing family income. Data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics indicated that greater exposure to welfare significantly associated with children's poorer educational attainment. Although exposure to…

Analysis of Current Population Survey and Social Security data through 1985 did not support hypothesis that increase in median earnings of Black men after 1964 reflects labor force withdrawal of large numbers of low-income Black men who received government transfers. Of the total gain in relative earnings from 1964-85, only 14 percent can be…

Examined low-income family characteristics important to American public in judging deserved amounts of public assistance. Finding from 1,369 adults suggest focus on characteristics of need in evaluating mother-only families and focus on work status and motivation of father in evaluating 2-parent families. Average benefit designated by respondents…

We examine the effects of 10 welfare and employment programs on single mothers' use of Head Start for their 3- to 4-year-old children, considering concurrent program effects on employment, income, and the use of other types of childcare settings. In general, these welfare and employment experiments increased parental employment and the use of…

Since 1998, federally funded One-Stop Service Centers around the country have focused primarily on assisting the unemployed into work. WASC tests a strategy that expands that mission by targeting people who are already working, but at low wages. Through career coaching, skills training, and better connections with employers - and led by a newly…

This document presents a transcript of a Joint Subcommittee on Monetary and Fiscal Policy hearing on the impact of the Federal "War on Poverty" programs. Testimony and submissions for the record included: (1) a paper by Lowell Gallaway et al., "The 'New' Structural Poverty: A Quantitative Analysis," which examines the effects…

This report contains eight papers which summarize a two-year research project that examined the income dynamics of poor families. The empirical work is based upon the National Longitudinal Surveys of the Michigan Survey Research Center, a special sample of 3,000 Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) families conducted by the authors, the…

Two models of the duration of stay on welfare are developed and estimated using panel data from the California Aid to Families with Dependent Children AFDC panel survey. The first model characterizes the distribution of length of stay on welfare as drawn from the lognormal distribution with a truncation at the duration of the experiment (sixty…

The Supplemental Security Income program, introduced in 1974, brought with it an increased need for Information and Referral (I and R) services for the elderly poor. A study of I and R at federal, state, and local levels showed limited impact of federal and state initiatives aimed at improving I and R. (Author)

Analyzed multigeneration household structures among two national samples of welfare families. Results showed household structure differs among welfare families of different races and mother's life-cycle stages, although mother-with-children families predominate. Multigeneration households do not affect welfare mothers' probabiity of employment or…

This report examines the experiences of homeless young parents with the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, which can be an important tool in helping them achieve long-term stability and economic self-sufficiency. The 1996 welfare reform act included special provisions that applied only to minor teen parents, requiring them to…