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Project Description

ABC involves a four-year limit on AFDC eligibility for nearly all families in which a parent was head of the case. During their first two years of welfare receipt, the plan requires all adult recipients to participate in activities designed to lead to employment. After two years of welfare receipt, the plan provides benefits for up to two additional years contingent on hours worked in a pay-for-performance job which the state provides if no employment opportunity is available. After four years of welfare receipt, no further AFDC assistance is provided to the family. Participation in the program is mandatory for all welfare recipients.

Project duration: Oct 1995 - Mar 2002

Sites studied include Dover, Delaware;
Georgetown, Delaware;
New Castle, Delaware;
Wilmington, Delaware

Sample Characteristics and Sites Studied

18,000 families (welfare participants).
Random sample of program (with ABC program) and group (with traditional AFDC) members (number in each group not reported).

Recent Findings in Brief

08/01/01: A Better Chance Evaluation: How Have They Fared? Outcomes After Four Years for the Earliest DABC Clients

Interim Impact Findings:

• The survey findings provide strong support for one key DABC assumption - that most families on aid are capable of at least some work. A high proportion of respondents (88 percent) worked sometime during the two years preceding the survey.
• The vast majority of families (82 percent) was not receiving cash assistance at the time of the survey. Across the sample, just over half (55 percent) were off TANF and working, 27 per-cent were off TANF and not working, and 18 percent were still on TANF.
• The median family’s annual income was $15,446. Over a third (36 percent) of families were above the federal poverty line ($17,050 for a family of three). At the other extreme, 29 percent of families were below 50 percent of poverty.
• As the state had expected, many households continued to rely on public and private assistance programs.
• Relatively few mothers in the DABC sample gave birth to additional children.
• Infants were much more likely than older children to have regular (at least weekly) contact with both parents. This finding supports other research showing that parents in "fragile families" are most likely to be seeing each other when their children are born.
• Among older children about two-fifths had at least one behavior problem, such as a difficulty at school or trouble with police. The rate for one problem for which we had measured the same sample three years earlier - high school absenteeism - was virtually unchanged.
• Many respondents reported that DABC led them to take more responsibility for their families.
• A third (34 percent) of respondents said that their families were having a harder time because of the new rules, and a majority (61 percent) felt that agency workers were more concerned with paperwork than with helping people.

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