Comparing Welfare-To-Work Programs
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University of Wisconsin–Madison Institute for Research on Poverty Volume 22 Number 3 Focus Summer 2003 Comparing welfare-to-work programs 1 Income and program participation among early TANF recipients: The evidence from New Jersey, Washington, and Wisconsin 2 Successful welfare-to-work programs: Were Riverside and Portland really that good? 11 Single-parent families and the food safety net 19 Service and systems integration: Renewing the quest for the “Holy Grail” of public policy 24 TANF families and the child protective system: Evidence from Illinois and Wisconsin 26 Left behind: SSI in the era of welfare reform 35 New systems of social programs? Local implementation of health care, Food Stamp, and TANF programs 44 The service integration agenda: Political, conceptual, and methodological challenges 50 Building comprehensive human service systems 58 ISSN: 0195–5705 Comparing welfare-to-work programs The failure of mandatory basic education to help high school dropouts, the lack of clear guidance on what makes training effective, and the low earnings and persistent poverty of most welfare leavers point to the continued need to identify pre- and post-employment strategies that are more successful in getting people higher-wage jobs. From: “The Role of Education and Training in Welfare Reform,” Brookings Institution Welfare Reform and Beyond Brief 20, April 2002, by Judith M. Gueron and Gayle Hamilton. As welfare-to-work programs proliferate in 50 states, the need to determine which are effective, which not, becomes more urgent, and the task more daunting. The first two articles in this issue of Focus explore two different approaches to the use of existing survey and administrative data to compare the effects of programs in different states, revealing both the possibilities and the limits of these data. Income and program participation among early TANF recipients: The evidence from New Jersey, Washington, and Wisconsin Maria Cancian, Marieka M. Klawitter, Daniel R. Meyer, and former recipients of welfare. These studies offer a Anu Rangarajan, Geoffrey Wallace, and Robert G. Wood unique opportunity to use interstate differences in how such families were faring as a key to understanding the effectiveness of different policies. But cross-state com- parisons have been problematic, for the studies were gen- Maria Cancian is Professor of Public Affairs and Social erally constructed to be of use for a specific state, and so Work, Daniel Meyer is Professor of Social Work, and often use different sampling strategies and different defi- Geoffrey Wallace is Assistant Professor of Public Affairs nitions of key outcomes.2 Thus an important issue that we at the University of Wisconsin–Madison; all are IRP af- hoped to address is the extent to which cross-state com- filiates. Marieka Klawitter is Associate Professor of Pub- parisons are limited by substantive differences in pro- lic Affairs at the University of Washington. Anu grams as opposed to differences in data or the measures Rangarajan is Associate Director for Human Services used by researchers. Research and Robert G. Wood is a Senior Economist at Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., Princeton, NJ. The research reported in this article constitutes an early effort to see whether preexisting data from several state studies can be made enough alike to permit valid com- From its peak in 1994 through 2001, the U.S. welfare parisons among state programs. It also reveals some of caseload declined by nearly 60 percent.1 The decline be- the difficulties confronting those who undertake the ef- came even more precipitous as state welfare reforms fort. Our aim was to develop a common set of analyses of picked up speed after Congress passed the Personal Re- the patterns of public benefits and earnings in three sponsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act in states, New Jersey, Washington, and Wisconsin, using 1996. In light of these dramatic reductions, many states administrative and survey data on those who have left sponsored studies to track what was happening to current welfare and those who have stayed. These three states Table 1 New Jersey, Washington, and Wisconsin, 1999, and the U.S. Average Characteristics New Jersey Washington Wisconsin United States Population Number (in millions) 8.1 5.8 5.3 273 Under age 18 (%) 24.6 25.8 25.7 25.7 Hispanic (%) 12.6 6.5 2.7 11.5 Black (%) 14.7 3.5 5.6 12.8 Noncitizen immigrant (1998, %) 8.9 4.4 1.7 6.3 Nonmetropolitan (%) N/A 17.2 32.3 20.1 Change in population 1990-99 (%) 5.1 18.3 7.3 9.6 Births to unmarried women 15–44 (1998, %) 28.3 27.9 28.5 32.8 Births to unmarried teens 15–19 (1997, %) 6.9 8.2 8.9 9.7 Birth rate per 1,000 women 15–19 (1998) 34.6 41.7 34.8 51.1 State Economic Characteristics Per capita income $35,551 $30,392 $27,390 $28,542 Unemployment rate (%) 4.6 4.7 3.0 4.2 Jobs in manufacturing (1998, %) 12.6 14.6 22.7 14.8 Jobs in service sector (1998, %) 32.1 27.4 25.9 29.9 Jobs in public sector (1998, %) 14.8 17.9 14.5 15.8 Family Profile Children in 2-parent families (%) 69.9 65.9 67.4 63.6 Children in 1-parent families (%) 21.7 23.7 22.4 24.8 Children in poverty (1998, %) 12.8 12.7 9.7 17.5 Adults in poverty (1998, %) 7.5 8.9 6.9 11.2 Source: Assessing the New Federalism, State Updates 6, 7, 8, 2001. Urban Institute, Washington, DC. 2 Focus Vol. 22, No. 3, Summer 2003 were chosen in part because in each state a survey of families receiving Temporary Assistance to Needy Fami- Table 2 lies (TANF) has been or is being conducted by indepen- Characteristics of Welfare Clients in New Jersey, Washington, and Wisconsin dent researchers, and because each has taken somewhat 3 different approaches to TANF. New Jersey Washington Wisconsin The Work First New Jersey program is being comprehen- Age (in years) sively evaluated by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., Younger than 20 9 3 6 20–29 44 43 58 which is tracking a representative statewide sample of 2,000 30–39 32 36 27 adult TANF case heads, beginning in 1997 and continuing to 40 or older 15 18 9 follow those who left as well as those who stayed. In Wash- Avg. age 30 33 28 ington, a team under the general leadership of the state Ethnicity Employment Security Department has been surveying 3,000 Black 51 9 63 current and former participants in Washington’s Work First Hispanic 27 9 10 TANF program since 1999. Wisconsin data come from the White 17 74 24 Survey of Wisconsin Families that is an integral part of the Other 5 11 4 Child Support Demonstration Evaluation; the survey ac- Education quired comprehensive information about the work and wel- < High school 39 21 46 fare experiences of about 3,000 Wisconsin families partici- High school (and/or GED) 44 42 36 More than high school 17 37 19 pating in Wisconsin Works (W-2), beginning in September 1997.4 Thus the surveys cover roughly the same period of Never married 69 38 83 time and are comparable in size and in broad methodologi- No. of children cal approach (for instance, all use a randomly selected study 1474134 sample). 2292929 3161321 4 or more 8 7 16 Some characteristics of the states and the Avg. age of youngest child 4.6 8 3.6 survey participants Worked in 2-yr period before TANF entry (from UI data) 54 75 81 In 1999 the three states that we examine were, in many respects, better off than the U.S. average, with fewer Wisconsin participants had the most extensive work ex- individuals in poverty, lower teen and nonmarital birth perience in the two years preceding TANF entry—80 rates, and fewer children in single-parent families (Table percent had worked, compared to about three-quarters of 1). They differed from each other in the ethnic and immi- the Washington participants and just over half of New grant composition of the population. New Jersey, for Jersey participants. example, had a far higher proportion of black and His- panic residents, and of noncitizen immigrants, than either Washingt on or Wisconsin. The states also differed in the distribution of employment—Wisconsin’s economy is The TANF programs more heavily dominated by manufacturing than are the economies of the other two states. Whereas the unem- The design of the welfare programs in these states shares ployment rate was below the national average only in certain broad commonalities, but the details vary substan- Wisconsin, per capita income was above the national tially. These differences are in part a matter of emphasis. average in New Jersey and Washington, and below it in In all three states, for example, the state version of TANF Wisconsin. Poverty rates were below the national average emphasizes engagement in work or worklike activities; in all three states. only women with children under 3 months (12 weeks) are categorically exempt, though some hard-to-serve indi- The participants in these three surveys also show substan- viduals and those with disabilities may be exempted by tial differences (Table 2). The New Jersey survey, as administrative decision. Wisconsin is by far the most would be expected, has by far the largest percentage of rigorous in its emphasis on work, assigning all applicants Hispanics. Three-quarters of the Washington survey par- immediately to a stage in a four-rung “job ladder” in- ticipants are white, and Wisconsin has the largest per- tended to progress toward unsubsidized employment and centage of African Americans.