Assessing the New Federalism Discussion Paper No. 04-04
The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders.
Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).
Previous research using the 1999 National Survey of America's Families (NSAF) found few differences in developmental risk between children in families who were currently receiving
welfare and those in families that had formerly received welfare.1 This paper reports on new NSAF analyses revealing a pattern in which male adolescents in the families of former recipients may be faring worse than their counterparts in the families of current recipients. We also find that family income, family structure, parental employment, and symptoms of poor parent mental health differed by welfare receipt status and, for income, by gender as well, for adolescents in 1999. Yet, these differences in family characteristics did not account for the elevated levels of developmental risk found among adolescent boys in former recipient families.
Research Approach
In this paper, we use data from NSAF to look at two mutually exclusive groups of children: children in families currently receiving welfare (current recipients) and children in families that had previously received welfare but were no longer recipients (leavers). We define current
recipients as families that were receiving welfare at the time of their NSAF interview in 1999. Leavers are defined as families that received welfare at some point within the two years before their interview in 1999, but who were not receiving welfare at the time of their interview.
(Sample characteristics are described in appendix table 1.) This paper does not consider children
whose families never received welfare, or whose families had received welfare more than two years before the survey but not more recently.2
For both current recipients and leavers, we identified the percentage of children under age
18 who appeared at risk for poor developmental outcomes. To assess developmental risk, we
used seven age-appropriate, parent-reported measures available in the NSAF:
- Fair or poor health status (assessed for ages 0 to 17)
- Limiting physical, mental, or health condition (ages 0 to 17)
- High level of behavioral or emotional problems (ages 6 to 17)3
- Low level of school engagement (ages 6 to 17)4
- Skipped school two or more times in the past year (ages 12 to 17)
- Suspended or expelled in the past year (ages 12 to 17)
- No participation in extracurricular activities in the past year (ages 6 to 17)5
Our previous analyses of the 1999 NSAF, which did not consider child gender or race/ethnicity, or look systematically for differences by child age, also used these measures of developmental risk to compare children in welfare recipient and leaver families. These previous analyses indicated that, among all 12- to 17-year-olds, children in current recipient families were less likely to have been suspended or expelled from school in the past year than children in former recipient families, while, among all children under 18, children in current recipient families were more likely to have a limiting health, physical, or mental condition than children in former recipient families.6 This earlier investigation did not find differences by welfare status on other measures of risk, including children's behavioral and emotional problems, health status, level of engagement in school, likelihood of skipping school, or participation in extracurricular activities.
The present paper extends previous research by exploring how patterns of developmental risk in children may differ between former and current recipient families within gender groups (contrasting boys in current versus former recipient families and girls in current versus former recipient families), age (contrasting children in current versus former recipient families among those under age 6, age 6 through 11, and age 12 through 17), or racial or ethnic group (contrasting children in current and former recipient families separately among those who are non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic black, and Hispanic). Examining patterns of risk within specific demographic subgroups is important, because there may be differences in how boys and girls, younger and older children, and children in families of different racial or ethnic groups are faring when families leave welfare or participate in welfare-to-work programs. Further, different patterns for specific subgroups may be obscured when looking at the overall population.
Experimental evaluations of welfare-to-work programs provide some indications of differences by subgroups. For example, regarding child age, multiple experimental evaluations of welfare-to-work programs suggest that programs that increased family income tended to positively affect young school-age children. These same programs, nevertheless, often had negative impacts on adolescents (Brooks, Hair, and Zaslow 2001; Zaslow et al. 2002). An example of findings regarding child gender comes from the Child Outcomes Study of the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies. This study evaluated impacts on young children of six mandatory work-first or education-first programs implemented under the Family Support Act. These programs generally increased employment but did not raise income, and had few effects on young children. Where child health was affected, however, impacts were generally negative, and these negative impacts were found to occur particularly among boys.
Notes for this section
1 See Zaslow et al. (2002).
2 See Zaslow et al. (2002) for findings regarding these groups.
3 The NSAF measure of behavioral and emotional problems is a scale based on parents' responses to six questions regarding how often in the past month their children didn't get along with other kids, couldn't concentrate or pay attention for long, and were unhappy, sad, or depressed. Parents of 6- to 11-year-olds were also asked how often during the past month their children felt worthless or inferior; were nervous, high-strung, or tense; or acted too young for their age. Parents of 12- to 17-year-olds were also asked how often during the past month their children had trouble sleeping, lied or cheated, and did poorly at schoolwork (Ehrle and Moore 1999).
4 The NSAF measure of school engagement is based on a scale created from parents' responses to four questions about how often their children did schoolwork only when forced to, did just enough schoolwork to get by, always did homework, and cared about doing well in school (Ehrle and Moore 1999).
5 The NSAF asked parents whether, in the last year, their child had been on a sports team either in or out of school, taken lessons after school or on weekends, had participated in any clubs or organizations after school or on weekends, or had participated in any other organized activities during the past year.
6 See Zaslow et al. (2002).
Note: This report is available in its entirety in the Portable Document Format (PDF).
About the Series
Assessing the New Federalism is a multiyear Urban Institute project designed to analyze the devolution of responsibility for social programs from the federal government to the states, focusing primarily on health care, income security, employment and training programs, and social services. Researchers monitor program changes and fiscal developments. Alan Weil is the project director. In collaboration with Child Trends, the project studies changes in family well-being. The project aims to provide timely, nonpartisan information to inform public debate and to help state and local decisionmakers carry out their new responsibilities more effectively.
Key components of the project include a household survey and studies of policies in 13 states, available at the Urban Institute's web site, http://www.urban.org. This paper is one in a series of discussion papers analyzing information from these and other sources.
Jennifer Brooks, formerly a senior research associate at Child Trends, is now a senior associate at Caliber Associates.
The Assessing the New Federalism project is currently supported by The Annie E. Casey Foundation, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and The Ford Foundation.
Latest Research
Browse by Topic:
PDF
Printer-friendly summary
