• Impacts on public assistance receipts from the ACT demonstration were small but significant.
• The ACT demonstration increased employment rates for some groups but had no effect on caretakers earnings.
• Weak overall impacts sometimes masked subgroup differences, especially by tier group.
• Staff and clients support the concept of time limits but the rules are too complex to understand.
• The interaction of state and federal time limits will result in the most disadvantaged families being the first to reach lifetime time limits on Texas TANF receipt.
• The increased use of financial penalties did not change most of the behaviors governed by the personal responsibility agreement.
• Most of the TANF caseload decline from 1995-1999 was not due to ACT waiver provisions.
• Impacts from this demonstration differ from those in other states but the mix of services is not comparable.
• A number of factors may have contributed to the small size of the impacts of the demonstration.
  • The structure of TX time limit policies with its many exemptions from state time limits.
  • Client confusion about the details and intent of both the time limit and PRA policies
  • Clients paying more attention to their immediate needs rather than future consequences embedded in these policies.
  • The exclusion of policies that supported employment from the set of policies included in the ACT demonstration

More specifically:

• Texas time limits caused small reductions in TANF receipt, slight increases in enrollment in Medicaid and transitional benefits but no change in use of food stamps.
• Persons facing TANF time limits received PRA penalties less often than other caretakers but differences were very small. For both groups, about two months of every year on TANF were spent in penalty status.
• The impacts of time limits differed by tier.
• Time limits caused a very small increase in caretaker employment but had no effect on overall quarterly earnings. Time limits affected Choices participation differently for short and long-term recipients and by tier.
• Time limits slightly increased the number of months in which child support was collected but produced no differences in other family or child outcomes.
• Expanded TANF eligibility rules allowed more working but very poor two-parent families onto TANF in the site with the highest share of Hispanic families.
• The personal responsibility agreement rules resulted in large increases in financial penalties, compared to earlier TANF sanctions.
• The combination of state time limits and the PRA produced small gains in caretaker employment and total family earnings, but had no impact on caretaker earnings.
• The combination of time limits and the personal responsibility agreement caused small increases in child support collections but few impacts on other family and child measures. This lack of impacts occurred even though many penalties were imposed for not complying with PRA provisions related to these outcomes.
• The personal responsibility agreement produced no overall impacts on the use of children’s TANF or Medicaid but increased caretakers’ time on TANF and Medicaid due to PRA rules. Use of food stamps declined for families subject to PRA
• Families subject to the PRA spent more time in penalty status.
• The PRA produced no overall impact on employment or earnings.
• No impacts were found in school attendance rates, most of the child support measures, or immunization rates, despite experimental groups being subject to PRA penalties in this area.
• Families typically needed one time payments due to losing their unemployment and used these payments to cover a one time emergency expense or to purchase or repair a vehicle.
• One time payments produced in few changes in household budgeting, employment, access to education and training, or access to child care.
• One time payments were not used to support persons outside the household.

Final Implementation Findings:

• An automated system assigned and tracked participation in this demonstration properly. This system provided consistency during a period when eligibility workers did not fully understand the complex rules of the ACT demonstration.
• Exemption from workforce services was the main reason that clocks did not ‘tick’ in the two experiments with state time limits.
• Staff initially had difficulty understanding and explaining ACT time limit provisions to clients, but their performance in this area improved over time.
• Clients understood that there were time limits but few knew what would happen to their benefits (TANF, food stamps, Medicaid) when they reached theirs.
• Workers explained personal responsibility agreement provisions accurately, but clients still did not understand the intent of the PRA or the consequences of not complying with its requirements.

Time Limits:

• After over five years of operation, the time limits experiment produced statistically significant but small reductions in TANF receipt coupled with small increases in the use of Medicaid and transitional benefits.
• Employment rates increased slightly but self-sufficiency earnings declined slightly.
• Few impacts on workforce development participation or family and child indicators were observed.
• Reduced TANF use and employment and child support collections gains were greatest among those who were best prepared to enter the workforce and those with short histories of welfare receipt.

Responsibilities, Employment and Resources:Choices Program:

• Three of the four RER sites in the Choices counties produced significant but varying impacts on welfare dynamics, large increases in financial penalties, slight gains in employment rates and family earnings, small reductions in Choices participation, increased use of child care subsidies and collection of child support but no impact on other adult and child outcomes.

• Non choices counties showed no consistent effects on the use of TANF benefits, slightly increased Medicaid receipt, and reduced the use of food stamps.
• Although there were no overall gains for employment or earnings, both increased for Tier 3 caretakers.
• While no differences were observed for families, experimental families used subsidized child care more often.

Time Limit experiment

• Test of random assignment revealed no significant differences between the two groups.
• After analyzing welfare dynamics, self-sufficiency, participation in workforce development services, and use of subsidized child care, positive net impacts were observed only for transfer from TANF cash benefits to transitional benefits and the percentage of cases using subsidized child care each month.

RER Choices Experiment

• Tests of random assignment revealed no significant differences between the two groups.
• In the first 19 months of the RER experiment in Choices counties, a statistically significant difference in the proportion of time spent on welfare was observed, with the experimental group spending less time on TANF than their counterparts in the control.
• There was a relatively small difference in the overall caretaker exit rates for the two groups.
• A statistically significant difference in the rate of welfare recidivism in the year following exit was observed between the experimental and control groups.
• A small but significantly significant difference in the rate of Choices participation is observed.
• There was no significantly significant difference in the rate of child care usage among the two groups.
• A statistically significant difference was shown in the rate of transfer to medical assistance-only status, transitional benefit-only status, and to payee only status.

RER Non-Choices experiment

• While no significant differences existed between the sizes of the groups, there were some differences in the demographics of the groups.
• Analysis of welfare dynamics from the first year found that the experimental group spent significantly less time on TANF than their counterparts.
• No statistically significant differences were found for any of the other welfare exit measures.
• No statistically significant differences were found for employment, earnings, or childcare measures.