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The Welfare Experiments: Politics and Policy Evaluation ROBIN H. ROGERS-DILLON STANFORD LAW AND POLITICS the welfare experiments The Welfare Experiments Politics and Policy Evaluation ROBIN H. ROGERS-DILLON Stanford Law and Politics an imprint of stanford university press stanford, california 2004 Stanford University Press Stanford, California www.sup.org © 2004 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rogers-Dillon, Robin. The welfare experiments : politics and policy evaluation / Robin H. Rogers- Dillon. cip:Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8047-4730-X (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 0-8047-4746-6 (pbk : alk. paper) 1. Public welfare—United States. 2. United States—Social policy—1993– 3. United States—Politics and government—1993–2001.I.Title. HV95.R58 2004 361.6'0973'09049—dc22 2004001027 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper. Original Printing 2004 Last figure below indicates year of this printing: 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 Designed and typeset at Stanford University Press in 10/12.5 Palatino. Special discounts for bulk quantities of Stanford Law and Politics books are available to corporations, professional associations, and other organizations. For details and discount information, contact the special sales department of Stan- ford University Press. Tel: (650) 736-1783, Fax: (650) 736-1784 For Christopher Contents List of Figures ix Acknowledgments xi 1. The Politics of Pilot Programs 1 2.Hope and an Experimental Design 23 3. The History of AFDC 51 4. Florida’s Family Transition Program 73 5. Street-Level Policymaking 100 6. Revolution in the States 134 7. The Rhetoric and Institutional Politics of Policy Experiments 159 Afterword: “Superwaivers” 181 Appendix 1. Methodology 193 Appendix 2. Who Was Compliant? 205 Notes 211 Bibliography 231 Index 243 Figures 4.1 Flow of clients through FTP as outlined in the Family Transition Act 79 4.2 Flow of clients through FTP as amended by the federal waiver 86 4.3 Flow of clients through FTP as implemented 91 6.1 Waiver requests by type of time limit, 1987–95 154 6.2 Types of time limits specified in articles on welfare reform, 1986–95 155 Acknowledgments I received so much support during the research and writing of this book that attempting to acknowledge these contributions is daunting. I will fall short of the task. Since there is no way to quantify the generos- ity and importance of each contribution, I will order my thanks chrono- logically. First, I would like to thank the Women’s Research and Educa- tion Institute (WREI) for giving me the opportunity to work as a Congressional Fellow for Congressman Charles Rangel in 1995/96— the height of welfare reform. It was an extraordinary opportunity. I also wish to thank Congressman Rangel and his staff, who permitted me to become involved in welfare reform at a level that went far beyond any of my expectations. Next, I would like to thank the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC), particularly Dan Bloom and Judith Gueron. Al- though I critique the role that evaluation companies played in the 1990s, I have great respect for the people with whom I worked at MDRC and am personally grateful for the opportunities that they gave me. I also wish to thank the administrators and staff involved in Florida’s Family Transition Program (FTP), particularly Shirley Jacques and John Bouldin. They are remarkable administrators and very gener- ous people. At the University of Pennsylvania, Robin Leidner, Harold Bershady, Jerry Jacobs, and John Skrentny provided me with great intellectual support and mentorship. At New York University, Lawrence Mead de- serves special thanks for both the longevity of his support and its re- silience. My interest in welfare was ignited in the late 1980s in his un- xii Acknowledgments dergraduate class on poverty and social welfare. Since then, Larry has been a great mentor and critic. I like to think that we share a commit- ment both to rigorous research, about which we usually agree, and to the good society, where our differences emerge. I hope that as a teacher I bring the same critical support to my students that Larry has brought to me. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Institute for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS) at Yale University provided me with a re- markable intellectual home from 1998 to 2000 as a Robert Wood John- son Health Policy Scholar. At ISPS, I had not only the luxury of time for my research and writing but also the unique opportunity to engage in debate and discussion with outstanding scholars, both established and emerging. Ted Marmor and Mark Schlesinger in particular were gener- ous with their time, which was limited, and their intellects, which ap- peared to have no limits at all. The Health Policy Scholars at ISPS, John Evans, Rogan Kersh, Taeku Lee, Gary McKissick, Eric Oliver, Mark Suchman, Ingrid Ellen, and Brian Gran contributed greatly to my think- ing on health, poverty, public policy, and many others issues, and I thank them. I would also like to thank my colleagues at Queens College, my in- tellectual home since 2000. Donald Scott, Dean Savage, Charlie Smith, and Hester Eisenstein helped me to find protected research time and provided me with great mentorship. Andy Beveridge, Bernard Cohen, and Charles Turner provided valuable comments on drafts of chapters in the manuscript. Victoria Pitts, my “senior” colleague by one year, has provided wise and often humorous counsel. I would like to make a special acknowledgment of four wonderful students from Queens Col- lege who contributed to the research for the Afterword, Sreekan Cheruku, Enge Ibrahim, Judith Rivera, and Michael Uvaydov. Shree, Enge, Julie, and Mike are proof that the City University of New York, particularly Queens College, attracts some of the best students in the world. David Humphries, a CUNY graduate student, provided me valuable editing and research assistance. I would have been lost with- out him. I owe one of my greatest debts to Mary Jo Bane and David T. Ell- wood of Harvard University, who agreed to talk with me and enriched this book immeasurably. Another great debt is to Steven M. Teles of Brandeis University. His intellectual generosity and insight are unpar- alleled, and his influence is woven throughout this book. Jill Quadagno read and commented on draft chapters of the manuscript. I am eter- Acknowledgments xiii nally grateful for her support of this project and remain in awe of her intellect. Anonymous reviewers of earlier drafts of the manuscript for Stanford University Press also provided incisive comments. I would also like to thank Lynne Haney of New York University, my co-investi- gator on another project, for graciously reading and commenting on material for the book. Jonathan Imber, the editor of Society, has given me the opportunity to write on issues of welfare policy in that out- standing publication. Some of the ideas that are explored in Chapter Seven of this book were initially raised by me in articles that appeared in Society. Finally, Amanda Moran, my editor at Stanford University Press, has energetically supported this book. An author could not ask for more. I also received considerable personal support during this project. First and foremost, I want to thank my husband Chris, to whom this book is dedicated. Our son Nicholas was a year old when I began my residence at the Institute for Social and Policy Studies at Yale and spent the better part of each week away from my family in Brooklyn. Chris picked up the baby and helped me with my bags without a hint of dis- sent. Before and since, Chris has given me tremendous freedom—a room of my own as prescribed by Virginia Woolf—while still being his wonderful and highly original self. I am also indebted to my father, D. W. Rogers, who conveyed his respect for women’s intelligence so thor- oughly that I was shocked as a young adult to find that the sentiment was not universally shared. Finally, I would like to acknowledge my mother, Kay Rogers, who grew up in a time and a town where college education for women was considered unnecessary, and then sent her daughters off to graduate school. This book would not have been pos- sible without her. the welfare experiments chapter 1 The Politics of Pilot Programs I think it is fair to say the debate is over....We now know that welfare reform works. President Bill Clinton, 1997 The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA) presents a riddle. For decades, substantial wel- fare reform had stalled at the federal level. The reform efforts that did pass, notably the Family Support Act of 1988, were watered down as they worked their way through the massive welfare bureaucracy. Ef- forts at reform had, at best, a slight impact on the majority of welfare re- cipients. Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) seemed to be a large bureaucracy that would withstand the most virulent political attacks by virtue of its sheer size and age. Then something odd hap- pened. The system crumbled in the span of a few years. The demise of welfare was a matter of fact. Time-limited welfare, a radical departure from AFDC, was taken for granted as an obvious solution to a failed policy just a few years after even minor alterations to AFDC seemed to be a political impossibility. How did this happen? To address this question, we need to look beyond the traditional ac- tors in policymaking—the interest groups, members of Congress, and presidential administrations.