Project Summary/Abstract:
Despite the successful expansions of the Earned Income Tax Credit over decades that
increased the labor supply of single mothers in the US, many mothers on welfare had not
transitioned to work as of the early 1990s. With welfare participation becoming viewed by many
as a cause of dependence rather than a consequence of disadvantage, a dramatic restructuring
of the cash assistance system for poor families took place. This major policy shift, which
imposed work requirements and time limits as conditions for receiving cash assistance, provides
an unprecedented opportunity to study the effects of maternal work incentives on the behaviors
of low-income adolescent children, who are at risk of perpetuating an intergenerational cycle of
poverty. The new regime was successful, in that welfare caseloads plummeted and employment
of low-skilled women increased. An implicit assumption was that the work-focused regime would
disrupt an assumed transmission of welfare dependence to the next generation. However, few
studies have considered how the new regime affects children—particularly adolescent
behaviors that developmental science and economic theory suggest would be responsive to the
new regime and that are known predictors of future health and economic success. We will
address this important gap by undertaking a comprehensive analysis of the effects of the
unprecedented large-scale work-focused policy shift known as welfare reform on a range of
highly salient social and health behaviors of adolescent children. Using all available and
appropriate datasets and both traditional and innovative methods, we will investigate the effects
of the work-first regime on anti-social teenage behaviors including crime/delinquency/school
behavior problems, as well as pro-social behaviors including participation in school/community
activities (volunteerism, religious attendance, clubs/teams) and school effort (e.g., homework),
and health compromising behaviors (substance use/abuse), as well as health-promoting
behaviors (e.g., healthy eating, exercise, recommended sleep). We will explore heterogeneous
effects (e.g., by age of youngest child, child gender, mother's welfare history) and effects of
timing and duration of exposure to welfare reform, as well as pathways between welfare reform
and behaviors. The proposed research focuses on behaviors that are highly salient for public
health and is essential for understanding the effects of the drastically reduced cash assistance
safety net on the next generation.