Assessing the Impact of Welfare Reform on Urban Communities: The Urban Change Project and Methodological Considerations: The Project on Devolution and Urban Change

摘要

The purpose of the Urban Change project is twofold: to describe income sources, income amounts, and well-being after devolution; and to infer the impacts of devolution on individuals, communities, and institutions by estimating what would have happened under AFDC. Although the five study components are designed to build on one another, and all five will be used in determining the effects of recent reform, this design paper focuses on the first component, the individual-level impact analysis. Information for the individual impact component will come from two sources. Administrative data on AFDC, TANF, Food Stamps, and earnings will be collected for all nonelderly parents of minor children who ever received Food Stamps or AFDC/TANF between 1992 and 2002 in the four counties. In addition, 2,000 single mothers receiving welfare in high-poverty neighborhoods will be surveyed in each countys principal city. While the administrative data will allow us to precisely estimate changes in welfare and employment over time, the surveys will provide crucial information on other sources of income, child and parent well-being, family formation, experiences with the welfare system, and attitudes toward welfare and work. This paper focuses on the portion of the impact analysis that uses administrative data. To infer impacts of the new policy on employment, earnings, and welfare, the study is using a multiple cohort design. In this design, a cohort, or group, of those receiving welfare or at risk of receiving welfare will be followed over time, and their outcomes will be compared. If patterns of behavior for cohorts who pass through reform differ markedly from patterns for those who are subject to the defunct rules of AFDC, this will be taken as evidence that welfare reform has had an impact. The remainder of this paper describes the multiple cohort design, investigates the power of the technique using data from a variety of sources, and discusses analytical issues which remain to be addressed.