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Project Description

Before Congress enacted federal welfare reform legislation, several states had implemented school attendance and living arrangement requirements for teenage parents under waivers to their AFDC programs. To ensure that the other states have the benefit of this experience, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (USDHHS), contracted with Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. (MPR) to examine teenage parent programs in four states that have implemented school attendance and living arrangements requirements as part of state welfare reform demonstrations.

The project summarizes lessons based on an examination of the operational experiences in four states that implemented school attendance and living arrangements requirements using federal waivers under the prior AFD program. The four states are Arizona, California, Massachusetts, and Virginia. The report draws lessons in three areas: 1) identifying teenage parents, 2) implementing school attendance requirements, and 3) implementing living arrangement requirements.

Project duration: - Oct 1997

Sites studied include Arizona
California (Sacramento County and Clara County)
Massachusetts
Virginia

Sample Characteristics and Sites Studied

Arizona: 3,660 teenage parents (age 19 or younger with no high school diploma or GED) on cash assistance (Arizona’s JOBS Program) in February, 1996.

California: 1,709 teenage parents or pregnant teens (under age 19 with no high school diploma or GED) on cash assistance (California’s Cal Learn Program) in February, 1996.

Massachusetts: 4,802 unmarried teenage parents (age 19 or younger with no high school diploma or GED) on cash assistance (Massachusetts’s Welfare Reform ’95 Program) in December, 1996.

Virginia: 493 (July, 1995), 573 (January, 1996), 511 (July, 1996), or 468 (January 1997) unmarried teenage parents (age 18 or younger) on cash assistance (Virginia Independence Program).

Recent Findings in Brief

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