Reviews recent court rulings that have upheld the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act and examines court decisions in light of two constitutional principles (Equal Protection and Supremacy clauses), which traditionally have been applied to the issue of aliens' eligibility for welfare benefits. Policy changes, designed…

Tested assumptions about welfare dependency and work by waiving a rule allowing primary wage-earners to work more than 100 hours a week without losing welfare eligibility. Results from an impact analysis that considered 3,591 experimental and control families indicate that the rule waiver had no effect on primary wage earners' work activity and…

We address how childcare subsidies help in the welfare-to-work transition relative to other factors. We examine how the policy operates, whether childcare problems differ by subsidy receipt, and the effect of subsidy on work. Data are from a random sample panel study of welfare recipients after 1996. Findings show that subsidy receipt reduces…

During the 1990s, the federal government promised low-income families that work would pay. Parents moved into jobs in response to new welfare rules requiring work, tax credits and other work supports that boosted take-home pay. Unfortunately, the record shows that low-income families have not progressed much. Many do not bring home enough to cover…

Support for WIC, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, is based on the belief that "WIC works." This consensus has lately been questioned by researchers who point out that most WIC research fails to properly control for selection into the program. This paper evaluates the selection problem using rich data…

Experiences of food insufficiencies, inadequate access to health care, and housing-related hardships represent how financial strain negatively impacts the entire family. The purpose of this study was to examine experiences of material hardships by TANF leavers and to understand factors that are associated with experiences of material hardship.…

This paper uses data from the 1996 and 2001 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation to assess the impact of recent policy initiatives intended to increase access to Food Stamps. It finds that reductions in state certification requirements increased Food Stamp participation rates of income-eligible families with children by one to…

Personal narrative embeds the expertise of subordinated groups in stories that seldom translate into public debate. The authors describe a community writing project in which welfare recipients used personal narratives to enter into the public record their tacit and frequently discounted knowledge. The research illustrates the difficulties and…

The Georgia Information Outreach to Reduce Welfare Dependency Project began in January 1996. The Georgia Department of Human Resources, Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS), commissioned the Southern Institute on Children and Families to conduct the project. Phase 1 of the project focused on the development of three information outreach…

To investigate the career maturity of welfare recipients, this thesis examines six independent variables: (1) race; (2) sex; (3) age; (4) level of formal education; (5) general intelligence; and (6) locus of control. Scales taken from the Career Maturity Inventory served as the dependent variables. The sample consisted of 83 welfare recipients who…

"Learnfare" is a term applied to the mandating of school attendance for teen parents and/or school age dependent children in households receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) benefits as a condition of continued eligibility. This idea emanates from policymakers' concern about high truancy and dropout rates generally,…

Previous research demonstrates that most female heads of families get neither adequate nor regular child support payments. This study provides a quantitative assessment of the nature of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) child support problem, and analyzes the effects of various government policies on success in collecting support…

This paper considers some of the implications involved in the utilization of the poor as employees of the welfare system. Major reasons for employing welfare recipients lie in the manpower shortage and the need to free professionals for professional responsibilities. It is suggested that agencies consider a system redesign which develops job…

A 1972 project to assess the impact of the work incentive program passed in 1971 (WIN 2) on the administration of WIN in local welfare found that the program was still in the transitional stage in the local welfare offices, that there was greater diversity among office operations as a result of WIN 2, that the program did not affect the clients…

The project was an effort to relocate unemployed and underemployed persons, predominantly Negroes and Puerto Ricans, from the ghetto to the suburbs to learn whether job finding assistance, counseling and relocation could enable families with an able-bodied wage earner to get off welfare rolls. (NTIS)