Over the last 30 years, the tenet of promoting self-sufficiency through work has become one of the primary objectives of many social welfare policies in the United States. Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the author asks if a mother's work hours influence her daughter's teenage fertility. The findings suggest a negative relationship, with…

In 2000, for the first time, the number of minimum income allocation system (RMI) recipients decreased. In 2001, this drop in the number of recipients began to stabilize, and the number started to increase again in 2002. The author observed a stabilization of the number of new recipients, whereas the number of exits decreased. This situation is…

Government and public focus on accountability for program outcomes, combined with practical and ethical constraints on experimental designs, make nonexperimental studies of social programs an increasingly common approach to producing information on program performance. In this paper, we compare the effectiveness of alternative nonexperimental…

This article critically appraises the success of the Back To Education Allowance (BTEA) in removing barriers to participation in 3rd level education for welfare recipients in Ireland. The paper is based on empirical data from focus group and in-depth qualitative interviews with 3rd level students on the BTEA. This study argues that it is…

The authors explored the relationship among childhood sexual abuse (CSA), physical and mental health work barriers, and employment outcomes using a large panel study of current and former welfare recipients. Controlling for human capital and demographic characteristics, they found CSA was associated with significantly fewer months worked over the…

Only in the last few years have researchers begun to pay close attention to the child-only cases that fall under the provision of the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program. Few attempts have been made to talk directly to kinship caregivers to understand their day-to-day lives. This triangulated study utilizes multiple strategies to…

Little guidance exists about how to tailor empowerment and resistance sexual assault programming to be responsive to varying groups of women. Using an investigation of 415 college women who completed a self-administered survey about a range of sexually aggressive experiences by a known male assailant, this investigation tested for distinct…

This manuscript reports on a study of how low-income employed single mothers and young adolescents manage household daily life. Analysis is based on longitudinal ethnographic data collected from families of 35 young adolescents over 3 years following the 1996 welfare reforms. Although mothers worked, young adolescents spent time unsupervised,…

The effects of government transfer programs such as unemployment insurance and welfare assistance on strikes were studied by analyzing state-level data on strike frequency from 1960 through 1974. Effects were estimated by using ordinary least squares regression, supplementing traditional models of strike activity with measures of transfer program…

Poverty remains a persistent problem for many women, and certain features of American life serve to keep them in a disadvantaged economic position. The welfare system is so arranged that many of its programs (such as the Work Incentive Program) favor men or (as in the case of Aid to Families with Dependent Children) force poor women to place their…

The working poor are employable people who have found low-paying jobs and barely scrape out a living. By removing many forms of federal aid, the Reagan administration has locked the working poor into poverty. In saving a few dollars today, we are penalizing the next generation. (CS)

Examined demographic characteristics of 119 mothers participating in a government work incentive program, and identified characteristics predicting successful employment. Total past employment and total months on longest job were associated with becoming employed, suggesting that programs designed to increase work experience may be valuable as…

Although most of the substantial increase in states' child care spending between 1997 and 1999 is expended through child care subsidy programs or by contracts with child care resource and referral agencies, little research has focused on how the child care subsidy program operates, who is served, and what services are offered. This report is one…

This report examines the impact of the 1996 Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) on the college enrollment of welfare recipients who completed high school. The report highlights the lower college enrollment rates among recipients in the post-Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) period and notes the impact…

The 1996 welfare reform law restricted immigrants' eligibility for public assistance, although many states have at least partially restored their eligibility. However, about three-fourths of the children of non-citizen immigrants were born in the United States and are therefore eligible for all government benefits. This brief examines whether…