Welfare Reform and its Long-Term Consequences for America's Poor

Cambridge University Press, 8/17/2009
EAN 9780521764254, ISBN10: 0521764254

Hardcover, 384 pages, 23.4 x 16 x 2.8 cm
Language: English

Two decades of federal and state-level demonstration projects and experiments concerning cash welfare in the United States culminated with the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, better known as welfare reform. Ten years after reform there remain a host of unanswered questions on the well-being of low-income families. In Welfare Reform and its Long Term Consequences for America's Poor, many of the nation's leading poverty experts address these and related outcomes to assess the longer-term effects of welfare reform. A diverse array of survey and administrative data are brought to bear to examine the effects of welfare reform and the concomitant expansions of the Earned Income Tax Credit on the level and distribution of income, the composition of consumption, employment, public versus private health insurance coverage, health and education outcomes of children, marriage, and social service delivery.

1. What we know, what we don't know, and what we need to know about welfare reform Rebecca Blank
2. Welfare reform and the level and composition of income Christopher Bollinger, Luis Gonzalez and James P. Ziliak
3. How have expansions in the earned income tax credit affected family expenditures? Qin Gao, Neeraj Kaushal and Jane Waldfogel
4. How families are doing nine years after welfare reform
2005 evidence from the three-city study Bianca Frogner, Robert Moffitt and David Ribar
5. The impact of welfare reform on leaver characteristics, employment and recidivism Peter R. Mueser, David W. Stevens and Kenneth R. Troske
6. A re-examination of the impact of welfare reform on health insurance among less-skilled women John C. Ham, Xianghong Li and Lara Shore-Sheppard
7. How welfare policies affect child and adolescent school performance
investigating pathways of influence with experimental data Pamela Morris, Lisa A. Gennetian, Greg J. Duncan and Aletha C. Huston
8. The effects of welfare and child support policies on the incidence of marriage following a nonmarital birth Jean Knab, Irv Garfinkel, Sara McLanahan, Emily Moiduddin and Cynthia Osborne
9. Welfare reform and health among the children of immigrants Ariel Kalil and Kathleen M. Ziol-Guest
10. Mismatches and unmet need
access to social services in urban and rural America Scott W. Allard.

'This volume brings together some of the best research from across the social sciences and provides a nuanced assessment of the key consequences of welfare reform. The authors lay out important lessons of the previous decade and the implications of the successes - and failures - of welfare reform. The volume is particularly timely as we confront the pressing challenge of designing policies that effectively support poor families in the current economic environment.' Maria Cancian, University of Wisconsin, Madison