Download or read book Evaluating Welfare Reform written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1999-11-04 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2001-08-10 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Evaluating Welfare Reform in the United States written by Rebecca M. Blank and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper reviews the economics literature on welfare reform over the 1990s. A brief summary of the policy changes over this period is followed by a discussion of the methodological techniques utilized to analyze the effects of these changes on outcomes. The paper then critically reviews the econometric and experimental literature on caseload changes, labor force changes, poverty and income changes, and family formation changes. A growing body of evidence suggests that the recent policy changes have influenced economic behavior and well-being in a variety of ways. One particular set of 'new-style' welfare programs seems to show especially promising results, with significantly increased work and earnings and reduced poverty.

Download or read book Policy Creation and Evaluation written by Richard Hoefer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although practitioners do not often identify an explicit focus on social welfare policy, the analysis (what it is) and evaluation (what it does) of policy is basic to social work practice. This unique pocket guide presents a case study on one of the most important domestic policy decisions in the post-WWII era, the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996. This law ended welfare as we knew it by creating the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program and closing the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program.Examining the law through three decision-making models assists readers in understanding TANF's historical antecedents, its political and power implications, and the way in which it meets social and economic goals. Individual chapters demonstrate how programs such as TANF are evaluated and the methods that can be used, such as primarily qualitative, primarily quantitative, and mixed methods evaluation techniques. Illustrating the advantages and disadvantages of each approach for evaluation, Hoefer makes use of the numerous studies undertaken in the thirteen years since welfare reform and its 2006 reauthorization. Part history text, readers will also learn about the details of the TANF legislation creation and evaluation, but will finish with a greater understanding of the policy creation and evaluation processes.This pocket guide will be useful to researchers and students of advanced social policy who seek to understand the two stages of policy-making, to develop policy, or to describe the impact of social policy on social problems.

Download or read book Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition written by Robert Moffitt and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book discusses the development of US welfare policy, including the landmark 1996 federal law that devolved most of the responsibility for welfare policies and their implementation to the states.

Download or read book Welfare Reform written by Jeff GROGGER and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Welfare Reform, Jeffrey Grogger and Lynn Karoly assemble evidence from numerous studies to assess how welfare reform has affected behavior. To broaden our understanding of this wide-ranging policy reform, the authors evaluate the evidence in relation to an economic model of behavior.

Download or read book Evaluating Comprehensive State Welfare Reforms written by Burt S. Barnow and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2000-03-01 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses issues involved in evaluating the new reforms, and applies those issues to the evaluation of welfare reform in Wisconsin.

Download or read book Evaluating Welfare and Training Programs written by Charles F. Manski and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Almost everyone would like to see the enactment of sound, practical measures to help disadvantaged people get off welfare and find jobs at decent wages, and over the past quarter-century federal and state governments have struggled to develop just such programs. How do we know whether they are having the hoped-for effect? How do we know whether these vast outlays of money are helping the people they are designed to reach? All welfare and training programs have been subject to professional evaluations, including social experiments and demonstrations designed to test new ideas. This book reviews what we have discovered from past assessments and suggests how welfare and training programs should be planned for the 1990s. The authors of this volume, each a recognized expert in the evaluation of social programs, do more than summarize what we have learned so far. They clarify why the issue of the proper conduct and interpretation of evaluations has itself been a subject of continuing controversy. In part, the problem is organizational, requiring the integrated efforts of social scientists, public officials, and the professionals who execute evaluations. In addition, there is a dispute about scientific method: should evaluators try to understand the complex social processes that make programs succeed (or fail), or should they focus on inputs and outputs, treating the programs themselves as "black boxes" whose machinery remains hidden? Evaluating Welfare and Training Programs will be important for policy researchers and evaluation professionals, social scientists concerned with evaluation methods, public officials working in social policy, and students of public policy, economics, and social work.

Download or read book Welfare Reform written by United States. General Accounting Office and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Evaluating Food Assistance Programs in an Era of Welfare Reform written by National Research Council and Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1999-06-10 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report was prepared in response to a request from the Economic Research Service (ERS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). It summarizes the discussions at a February 1998 workshop convened by the Committee on National Statistics; the Board on Children, Youth, and Families; and the Food and Nutrition Board. The fiscal year 1998 (FY1998) appropriations bill for USDA gave ERS responsibility for all research and evaluation studies on USDA food assistance programs. The bill provided $18 million to fund these studies, an increase from $7 million in FY1997. ERS asked the Committee on National Statistics for assistance in identifying new areas of research and data collection and in further improving the evaluation studies of food assistance programs. By bringing together many who work on evaluation of food assistance programs, policy analysis, survey methods, nutrition, child nutrition and child development, outcome measurement, and state welfare programs, the issues presented and discussed at the workshop provided ERS with information that could be used to develop a framework for their research program.

Download or read book Evaluating Food Assistance Programs in an Era of Welfare Reform written by National Research Council and Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1999-07-10 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report was prepared in response to a request from the Economic Research Service (ERS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). It summarizes the discussions at a February 1998 workshop convened by the Committee on National Statistics; the Board on Children, Youth, and Families; and the Food and Nutrition Board. The fiscal year 1998 (FY1998) appropriations bill for USDA gave ERS responsibility for all research and evaluation studies on USDA food assistance programs. The bill provided $18 million to fund these studies, an increase from $7 million in FY1997. ERS asked the Committee on National Statistics for assistance in identifying new areas of research and data collection and in further improving the evaluation studies of food assistance programs. By bringing together many who work on evaluation of food assistance programs, policy analysis, survey methods, nutrition, child nutrition and child development, outcome measurement, and state welfare programs, the issues presented and discussed at the workshop provided ERS with information that could be used to develop a framework for their research program.

Download or read book For Better and For Worse written by Greg J. Duncan and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2002-01-17 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 1996 welfare reform bill marked the beginning of a new era in public assistance. Although the new law has reduced welfare rolls, falling caseloads do not necessarily mean a better standard of living for families. In For Better and For Worse, editors Greg J. Duncan and P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale and a roster of distinguished experts examine the evidence and evaluate whether welfare reform has met one of its chief goals-improving the well-being of the nation's poor children. For Better and For Worse opens with a lively political history of the welfare reform legislation, which demonstrates how conservative politicians capitalize on public concern over such social problems as single parenthood to win support for the radical reforms. Part I reviews how individual states redesigned, implemented, and are managing their welfare systems. These chapters show that most states appear to view maternal employment, rather that income enhancement and marriage, as key to improving child well-being. Part II focuses on national and multistate evaluations of the changes in welfare to examine how families and children are actually faring under the new system. These chapters suggest that work-focused reforms have not hurt children, and that reforms that provide financial support for working families can actually enhance children's development. Part III presents a variety of perspectives on policy options for the future. Remarkable here is the common ground for both liberals and conservatives on the need to support work and at the same time strengthen safety-net programs such as Food Stamps. Although welfare reform-along with the Earned Income Tax Credit and the booming economy of the nineties-has helped bring mothers into the labor force and some children out of poverty, the nation still faces daunting challenges in helping single parents become permanent members of the workforce. For Better and For Worse gathers the most recent data on the effects of welfare reform in one timely volume focused on improving the life chances of poor children.

Download or read book Welfare Reform written by Neil Gilbert and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the late 1980s welfare policies in France and the United States have increasingly been shaped by a strong emphasis on citizens' obligations to work and be independent, and a weakening of entitlements to income maintenance. Throughout the advanced industrialized nations, welfare reforms incorporate work-oriented measures such as financial incentives, insertion contracts, training, and requirements to search for and accept jobs. The evidence in this volume suggests that while the details may vary, welfare reforms in France and the United States have more in common than is often acknowledged. Welfare Reform provides an in-depth analysis of the development and structure of modern welfare programs and how they function. The dynamics of welfare reform are illuminated by focusing on two programs: the Revenu Minimum d'Insertion in France and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families in the United States. Taking various analytic approaches, contributors examine the relations between poverty and work, how U.S. and French models of income support have been transformed in recent times, the relative impacts of economic growth and policy reforms on rates of welfare participation, and what happens to recipients who leave the welfare rolls. Welfare Reform will help researchers and policymakers gain perspective on where they are headed and how best to get there as they journey down the highway of welfare reform. Neil Gilbert is Chernin Professor of Social Welfare at the School of Social Welfare, University of California at Berkeley, and co-director of the Center for Child and Youth Policy (CCYP). His numerous publications include 25 books and over 100 articles that have appeared in The Public Interest, Society, Commentary, and other leading academic journals. Antoine Parent is associate professor of economics at the University of Paris 8, associate researcher at MATISSE, University of Paris 1--Sorbonne, and research program manager at the Research Division of the French Ministry of Social Affairs.

Download or read book Evaluating Welfare Reform written by Douglas J. Besharov and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 66 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Welfare Reform written by Rosemary A. Stevens and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-08 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the late 1980s welfare policies in France and the United States have increasingly been shaped by a strong emphasis on citizens' obligations to work and be independent, and a weakening of entitlements to income maintenance. Throughout the advanced industrialized nations, welfare reforms incorporate work-oriented measures such as financial incentives, insertion contracts, training, and requirements to search for and accept jobs. The evidence in this volume suggests that while the details may vary, welfare reforms in France and the United States have more in common than is often acknowledged. Welfare Reform provides an in-depth analysis of the development and structure of modern welfare programs and how they function. The dynamics of welfare reform are illuminated by focusing on two programs: the Revenu Minimum d'Insertion in France and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families in the United States. Taking various analytic approaches, contributors examine the relations between poverty and work, how U.S. and French models of income support have been transformed in recent times, the relative impacts of economic growth and policy reforms on rates of welfare participation, and what happens to recipients who leave the welfare rolls. Welfare Reform will help researchers and policymakers gain perspective on where they are headed and how best to get there as they journey down the highway of welfare reform. Neil Gilbert is Chernin Professor of Social Welfare at the School of Social Welfare, University of California at Berkeley, and co-director of the Center for Child and Youth Policy (CCYP). His numerous publications include 25 books and over 100 articles that have appeared in The Public Interest, Society, Commentary, and other leading academic journals. Antoine Parent is associate professor of economics at the University of Paris 8, associate researcher at MATISSE, University of Paris 1--Sorbonne, and research program manager at the Research Division of the French Ministry of Social Affairs.

Download or read book The New World of Welfare written by Rebecca M. Blank and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2004-05-13 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Congress must reauthorize the sweeping 1996 welfare reform legislation by October 1, 2002. A number of issues that were prominent in the 1995-96 battle over welfare reform are likely to resurface in the debate over reauthorization. Among those issues are the five-year time limit, provisions to reduce out-of-wedlock births, the adequacy of child care funding, problems with Medicaid and food stamp receipt by working families, and work requirements. Funding levels are also certain to be controversial. Fiscal conservatives will try to lower grant spending levels, while states will seek to maintain them and gain additional discretion in the use of funds. Finally, a movement to encourage states to promote marriage among low-income families is already taking shape. The need for reauthorization presents an opportunity to assess what welfare reform has accomplished and what remains to be done. The New World of Welfare is an attempt to frame the policy debate for reauthorization, and to inform the policy discussion among the states and at the federal level, especially by drawing lessons from research on the effects of welfare reform. In the book, a diverse set of welfare experts—liberal and conservative, academic and nonacademic—engage in rigorous debate on topics ranging from work experience programs, to job availability, to child well-being, to family formation. In order to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of research on welfare reform, the contributors cover subjects including work and wages, effects of reform on family income and poverty, the politics of conservative welfare reform, sanctions and time limits, financial work incentives for low-wage earners, the use of medicaid and food stamps, welfare-to-work, child support, child care, and welfare reform and immigration. Preparation of the volume was supported by funds from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.

Download or read book Welfare Reform and Beyond written by Isabel V. Sawhill and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2004-05-26 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Brookings Institution's Welfare Reform & Beyond Initiative was created to inform the critical policy debates surrounding the upcoming congressional reauthorization of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and a number of related programs that were created or dramatically altered by the 1996 landmark welfare reform legislation. The goal of the project has been to take the large volume of existing and forthcoming research studies and shape them into a more coherent and policy-oriented whole. This capstone collection gathers twenty brief essays (published between January 2001 and February 2002) that focus on assessing the record of welfare reform, specific issues likely to be debated before the TANF reauthorization, and a broader set of policy options for low-income families. It is a reader-friendly volume that will provide policymakers, the press, and the interested public with a comprehensive guide to the numerous issues that must be addressed as Congress considers the future of the nation's antipoverty policies. The collection covers the following topics and features a new introduction from the editors: - An Overview of Effects to Date - Welfare Reform Reauthorization: An Overview of Problems and Issues - A Tax Proposal for Working Families with Children - Welfare Reform and Poverty - Reducing Non-Marital Births - Which Welfare Reforms are Best for Children? - Welfare and the Economy - What Can Be Done to Reduce Teen Pregnancy and Out-of-Wedlock Births? - Changing Welfare Offices - State Programs - Welfare Reform and Employment - Fragile Families, Welfare Reform, and Marriage - Health Insurance, Welfare, and Work - Helping the Hard-to-Employ - Sanctions and Welfare Reform - Child Care and Welfare Reform - Job Retention and Advancement in Welfare Reform - Housing and Welfare Reform - Non-Citizens - Block Grant Structure - Food Stamps - Work Support System - Possible Welfare Re