Reform of welfare is one of the nation's most contentious issues, with debate often driven more by politics than by facts and careful analysis. Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition identifies the key policy questions for measuring whether our changing social welfare programs are working, reviews the available studies and research, and recommends the most effective ways to answer those questions. This book discusses the development of welfare policy, including the landmark 1996 federal law that devolved most of the responsibility for welfare policies and their implementation to the states. A thorough analysis of the available research leads to the identification of gaps in what is currently known about the effects of welfare reform. Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition specifies what-and why-we need to know about the response of individual states to the federal overhaul of welfare and the effects of the many changes in the nation's welfare laws, policies, and practices. With a clear approach to a variety of issues, Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition will be important to policy makers, welfare administrators, researchers, journalists, and advocates on all sides of the issue.

Reform of welfare is one of the nation's most contentious issues, with debate often driven more by politics than by facts and careful analysis. Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition identifies the key policy questions for measuring whether our changing social welfare programs are working, reviews the available studies and research, and recommends the most effective ways to answer those questions. This book discusses the development of welfare policy, including the landmark 1996 federal law that devolved most of the responsibility for welfare policies and their implementation to the states. A thorough analysis of the available research leads to the identification of gaps in what is currently known about the effects of welfare reform. Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition specifies what-and why-we need to know about the response of individual states to the federal overhaul of welfare and the effects of the many changes in the nation's welfare laws, policies, and practices. With a clear approach to a variety of issues, Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition will be important to policy makers, welfare administrators, researchers, journalists, and advocates on all sides of the issue.

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 fundamentally changed the nation's social welfare system, replacing a federal entitlement program for low-income families, called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), with state-administered block grants, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. PRWORA furthered a trend started earlier in the decade under so called "waiver" programs-state experiments with different types of AFDC rules-toward devolution of design and control of social welfare programs from the federal government to the states. The legislation imposed several new, major requirements on state use of federal welfare funds but otherwise freed states to reconfigure their programs as they want. The underlying goal of the legislation is to decrease dependence on welfare and increase the self-sufficiency of poor families in the United States. In summer 1998, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) asked the Committee on National Statistics of the National Research Council to convene a Panel on Data and Methods for Measuring the Effects of Changes in Social Welfare Programs. The panel's overall charge is to study and make recommendations on the best strategies for evaluating the effects of PRWORA and other welfare reforms and to make recommendations on data needs for conducting useful evaluations. This interim report presents the panel's initial conclusions and recommendations. Given the short length of time the panel has been in existence, this report necessarily treats many issues in much less depth than they will be treated in the final report. The report has an immediate short-run goal of providing DHHS-ASPE with recommendations regarding some of its current projects, particularly those recently funded to study "welfare leavers"-former welfare recipients who have left the welfare rolls as part of the recent decline in welfare caseloads.

How well do you understand the sweeping welfare reforms of the mid-1990s? The Transition from Welfare to Work: Processes, Challenges, and Outcomes provides a comprehensive examination of the welfare-to-work initiatives that were undertaken just prior to and following the major reform of United States welfare legislation in 1996. It will familiarize you with the intent of those reforms and show you how those interventions have been implemented. It also explores the barriers to employment that must be overcome by welfare-to-work clients, and the impact of these changes on clients, employers, and society. From the editors: “Although the numbers enrolled in welfare programs dropped dramatically in the last few years of the economic expansion of the 1990s, until recently we have known very little about the conditions of families affected by welfare-to-work policies. How did welfare-to-work interventions change the lives of participants and their families? What factors helped or hindered the transition to paid work? Are welfare-to-work policies likely to have actually improved the earnings or income of former AFDC recipients? This book studies all these questions.” The Transition from Welfare to Work: Processes, Challenges, and Outcomes presents qualitative, quantitative, and econometric analyses as well as panel studies, longitudinal, and quasi-experimental designs. Beginning with a brief description of the goals and structure of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, this book examines all of the phases of the welfare-to-work process. Use it to increase your understanding of: the implementation of interventions designed to place TANF recipients in jobs the factors that impact the readiness of low-income women to enter the job market the outcomes of current and earlier welfare-to-work interventions the steps we need to take to know how these citizens are faring in the welfare-to-work environment and more!