What Has Welfare Reform Accomplished? Impacts on Welfare Participation, Employment, Income, Poverty, and Family Structure

Robert F. Schoeni and Rebecca M. Blank

Working Papers from RAND Corporation Publications Department

Abstract: This paper evaluates the effectiveness of recent welfare reforms, investigating the effects of both state-specific waivers in the early 1990s and the 1996 federal reform legislation. Unlike earlier work, the authors analyze a wide array of indicators, including welfare participation, labor market involvement, earnings, income and poverty, and family formation. While no single methodology is entirely satisfying, the results in this paper are convincing in part because they are consistent across alternative approaches. The authors find strong evidence that these policy changes reduced public assistance participation and increased family earnings. The result was a rise in total family income and a decline in poverty. The gains from the 1996 reforms were not as broadly distributed across the distribution of less-skilled women as were the effects of waivers. Waivers also increased labor market involvement among the less-skilled, but the 1996 reforms had little additional impact on work behavior after controlling for economic forces. These policies also appeared to have an impact on family structure.

Keywords: SOCIAL WELFARE; PUBLIC EXPENDITURES; PUBLIC POLICY (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H53 D60 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000
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Working Paper: What has Welfare Reform Accomplished? Impacts on Welfare Participation, Employment, Income, Poverty, and Family Structure (2000)
Working Paper: What Has Welfare Reform Accomplished? Impacts on Welfare Participation, Employment, Income, Poverty, and Family Structure (2000)
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ran:wpaper:00-02

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