Welfare Reform: How Will It Affect the Well-Being of Children and Families?

How children’s well-being is affected by their parents’ transition from welfare to work is an important question for our country in good and bad economic times. How these changes affect family functioning and progression out of poverty is also a critical concern. Mathematica Policy Research has been in the forefront of research on welfare reform’s impact on children and families.

Meeting the Need for Infant Care

How families moving from welfare to work meet the competing demands of work and family responsibilities is an important issue. We have analyzed how they meet their needs for infant care, which historically has been in short supply in our country. Through telephone interviews with state officials and site visits with focus groups, we have documented how parents and states have responded to the challenge of finding infant care that supports school attendance and the transition to employment.

The research team also documented welfare and child care policies in the 22 states that did not exempt welfare mothers with infants from work or school requirements. The study produced several designs for testing policy alternatives to support mothers of infants as they begin attending school or work.

Studying the Special Needs of Teenage Parents

Home visiting services have been promoted as an early intervention strategy to provide health, social, educational, and other services to improve the mothers’ employment, education, and fertility outcomes and children’s health and well-being. Working with the University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education, we collected data for an evaluation of home visitor services for teenage parents with young children to measure the benefits of these services. We have also studied state programs to help teenage mothers stay in school and prepare for employment.

Studying Children’s Well-Being

What factors should be included in assessments of children’s well-being? Working with 10 states, we developed measures for use in state welfare reform evaluations. In Iowa, we surveyed welfare mothers with children ages 5 to 12, focusing on children’s social and behavioral adjustment, school progress, and health. The research also examined parenting practices, the home and child care environments, and parents’ psychological well-being. The researchers coordinated the surveys and analysis of the Iowa child and family outcomes with similar evaluations in Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, and Minnesota.

Growing Up in Poverty

Is welfare reform altering the quality of child care? For a study of mothers of preschoolers who are leaving welfare, we provided design and data collection support. We conducted baseline and 12-month follow-up interviews with the mothers and designed child care observations conducted in two California locations; Tampa, Florida; and New Haven, Connecticut.

Identifying Effective Programs

Many successful approaches to dealing with social problems spring out of promising strategies and solutions originally developed on a small scale. Working with the National Center for Children in Poverty, we are identifying and profiling programs that show promise in addressing parents’ and children’s needs that result from welfare reform. We are also examining what types of programs promote welfare recipients’ self-sufficiency while addressing children’s needs.

Spending on Programs and Research

Documenting the money spent on programs and research is an important factor in planning and evaluation. To document spending on early care and education programs and research that support young children's care and development, we analyzed data from foundations and federal and state government agencies. This study is helping policy-makers, program directors, and researchers understand policy shifts under the new welfare legislation.

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