Focus Group Findings:

“Nearly all participants knew about the time limits on the receipt of welfare, and most knew about work requirements for persons receiving welfare. But they did not know all the details of the new programs.”

“Hispanics knew, in general, that the new law restricted assistance to immigrants; and many were upset about it.”

“The majority of the participants favored time limits on welfare receipt. This was true among African Americans, Hispanics, and whites and among women and men. They viewed the new provisions as providing them with the motivation to find jobs and improve their lives. Still, some people qualified their support by saying that some parents needed longer to make the transition to work and other needed long-term public assistance. And some were scared or angry.”

“Participants cited many examples of abuse of the welfare system, but they disassociated themselves and other people who truly need it from the abusers.”

“Participants expressed qualified support for work requirements for welfare recipients, as long as exceptions were made for parents who could not find adequate child care or had children with special needs.”

“Many Hispanics though time limits and work requirements were fine for people who are legally in the country and can get good jobs. But illegal immigrants whose American-born children were receiving welfare were very worried about work requirements. They feared being separated from their children if they were caught at a job by immigration officers and deported.”

“Participants emphasized the importance of the non-cash benefits that welfare recipients receive, notably Medicaid and child care assistance. Many even argued that the non-cash benefits were more important than the cash benefit.”

“A majority of the participants favored “family cap” provisions that deny increases in cash assistance to mothers who have an additional child while already receiving welfare.”

“Participants criticized as anti-family some child support enforcement measures that pressure men to acknowledge paternity but may actually reduce the amount of support mothers on welfare receive from fathers.”

“The relationships between mothers on welfare and the fathers of their children were often characterized by a lack of trust. Both women and men were concerned that the new system, with its emphasis on work, would alter the power balance between women and men.”

“When asked about the likely impact of welfare reform, participants responded in both positive and negative terms. Although they predicted increased personal responsibility, they also predicted increased crime and family hardships.”

“When asked what advice they would give to the President and to state officials, participants asked for more time to make the transition, for more child care, educational and training assistance, for continued medical coverage, and for help learning English.”

“On balance, the predominant tone of the focus group interviews was cautious optimism- surprisingly so, given that welfare recipients face the threat of time limits and sanctions. Although many participants were concerned that they would not be able to move into the work world, they seemed willing to try if government agencies would provide them with what they viewed as necessary assistance.”

Current and recent TANF recipients in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio were asked, in a 1999 survey, what they understood about the new welfare time-limit rules, whether they supported the idea of time limits and work requirements, and whether they had changed their work effort and family patterns as a result. Most knew that there is a time limit on how long a person can receive cash assistance, and a majority in two of the three cities knew how long it was. But there was much uncertainty about other aspects of the rules. Although support for time limits was mixed, large majorities in each city supported the idea of work requirements. Fourteen percent of the individuals reported that because of the welfare rules they had taken jobs that they didn’t like or that had lower pay than they otherwise would have accepted or that were at inconvenient hours. Five percent reported taking steps to avoid having children because of the rules, and less than 1 percent reported marrying because of the rules.

Women who have left TANF in three cities—Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio—have an average employment rate of 63 percent after leaving, a rate similar to figures found in studies of welfare leavers in many other states. But this average obscures a large amount of variation across different groups of women, some of whom have done much better than this and some of whom have done much worse. Women with lower levels of education, worse levels of health status, with younger children, and who are themselves young have considerably lower employment rates and post-welfare income levels than women with greater levels of education, better health status, with older children, and who are older. Outcomes also differ among those leavers with a history of greater welfare dependence, a group not examined in other studies. The employment and, especially, income outcomes among these leavers are considerably worse than the average. These large differences in outcomes for different former welfare recipients should be examined by policy-makers when they consider reforms to assist those who have difficulty attaining self-sufficiency off the welfare rolls.

Seventeen percent of a sample of current and recent welfare recipients in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio reported that their benefits had been reduced or stopped because the welfare office said they weren’t following the rules. These penalties resulted from both partial and full-family sanctions as well as from case closings for procedural reasons. Recipients reported that the most common reasons were missing an appointment or failing to file required paperwork. Only 12 percent of the penalties were imposed for failing to take a job or to show up for a job-related activity. Individuals whose benefits were reduced or stopped were more disadvantaged than other recipients in many respects, such as education, health, financial difficulties, housing quality, and neighborhood quality. Former recipients who reported leaving the welfare rolls because of sanctions or case closings had substantially lower employment rates and earnings than did those who left for other reasons. These findings suggest that agencies and organizations may wish to give more attention to families at imminent risk of sanctions or case closings to help them come into compliance. They also suggest that families who leave welfare due to noncompliance may need more assistance in finding and retaining employment.

• Medicaid represents the major component of the health care safety net for poor children and their families in the Three-City Study.
• Relatively few are covered by employer-sponsored plans or other forms of health insurance.
• The longer families are off welfare, the less likely they are to be covered by any type of health insurance.
• A larger percentage of Mexican-Americans, compared to other Hispanics or African-Americans, lack coverage, and children in two-parent households are less likely to be covered than children in single-parent households.
• Parents value Medicaid and go to great lengths to obtain it for their children, but some parents are unable to obtain or afford health coverage for themselves.

• This brief examines whether native-born children of immigrant parents who haven’t themselves become citizens receive public assistance at the same level as comparable children of native-born parents. The sample is a 1999 survey of about 2,400 families in low-income neighborhoods in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio. We find that native-born children of non-citizen immigrants appear to be receiving less cash assistance (TANF and SSI) in all three cities. However, in Boston and San Antonio they were receiving about as much in-kind assistance (food stamps, Medicaid, and WIC). The implications of these findings are discussed.

Child care settings appear to be meeting only some of the diverse needs of low-income preschool children and families. Formal child care centers provide care of the highest developmental quality, whereas unregulated home settings provide care that is most accessible, flexible, and satisfying to mothers. Home arrangements were the most popular child care choices for low-income parents.

While the length of the passage of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) mandated time limits and employment for options during nonstandard work hours such as nights and weekends, transportation difficulties, and a higher likelihood of living in low-income communities with few time in care was the lowest in centers, centers had the highest provider education, reasonable cost, and acceptable group size and provider-child ratios.

"Women remaining on TANF in three cities--Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio--have average employment rates of 18 percent and poverty rates of 85 percent. These compare to an employment rate among TANF leavers of about 60 percent and a poverty rate of 70 percent, on average. About 40 percent of stayers have less than a high school education, and many suffer from high levels of depression and domestic violence; these characteristics do not differ greatly from those of TANF leavers. They are more likely to report being in poor health than are leavers. Employed recipients have higher levels of education and better health than nonemployed recipients. They also have significantly higher income because their earnings are not fully offset by lower benefits. Nonemployed recipients nevertheless have higher incomes than nonemployed leavers, who have neither earnings nor TANF benefits."

"Preschoolers and adolescents show patterns of cognitive achievement and problem behavior that should be of concern to policy-makers. The preschoolers and adolescents in our sample are more developmentally at risk compared to middle-class children in national samples. In addition, adolescents whose mothers were on welfare in 1999 have lower levels of cognitive achievement and higher levels of behavioral and emotional problems than do adolescents whose mothers had left welfare, or whose mothers had never been on welfare. For preschoolers, mothers’ current or recent welfare participation is linked with poor cognitive achievement; preschoolers of recent welfare leavers have the most elevated levels of problem behavior. Preschoolers and adolescents in sanctioned families also show problematic cognitive and behavioral outcomes. Mothers’ marital, educational, mental, and physical health status, as well as their parenting practices, seem to account for most of the welfare group differences."

• There is a high rate of turnover both off of and onto the TANF rolls. Almost one half of the recipients left the rolls and almost half of that number entered welfare.
• There have been large increases in employment over the period of all groups.
• The income gain from moving off welfare is modest, ranging from 11 percent to 18 percent depending on whether the EITC is included or excluded, and depending on whether work-related expenses are netted out.
• Nonworking leavers, a group of special policy interest, are shown to survive primarily on the earnings of others in the family, Food Stamp benefits, SSI, and a collection of miscellaneous sources such as child support and help from family and friends.
• The income gain from moving off welfare is not much larger than the income gain from staying on welfare, since employment rates have risen on welfare as well.
• The fact that many women have left welfare in the face of the rather modest financial incentives in place may partly be the result of the imposition of work and other requirements, backed up by sanctions, which encourage exit from the rolls; and of the growth of diversion policies, which discourage entry.

• Examination of the consequences and correlates of TANF non-entry and entry is consistent with the view that those in greater need are obtaining assistance.
• On application, results show that there is an overall tendency for the more disadvantaged to apply and for the less disadvantaged not to apply. Findings show that many of those who don't apply after having thought about it only do so because of the hassle of applying to welfare.
• For diversion, researchers found very high levels of diversion experience, with about 77 percent of applicants having experienced some kind of diversion-related issue.
• Non-entrant attitudes and perceptions about welfare exerted a strong influence on the decision to apply for TANF or not, often predisposing families toward non-entry despite their need for financial assistance.
• Non-entrants were diverted from applying for, or receiving TANF cash assistance (1) by the institutional, gatekeeping policies and informal practices of social service agencies, (2) by the “no welfare receipt” beliefs held by members of their kin networks, and (3) through self-imposed diversion in response to time limit policies.
• Many non-entrant families were not “making ends meet,” and often creatively generated resource packages that compromised the physical and mental health of primary caregivers and the well-being of children.

• In this comment, data from the Three-City Study suggests that the magnitude of the income gains found in an analysis on Michigan (from Danziger, Heflin, Corcoran, Oltmans and Wang) is very sensitive to the presence and magnitude of income of other family members. The income gains from leaving welfare are much smaller in the three cities than in Michigan because of smaller amounts of this form of income.
• The Three-City data also show that most of the income gains from leaving welfare for work could be achieved by staying on welfare and working. The Michigan study again differs from this finding because those who leave welfare in Michigan, even if they were working while on the rolls, experience large gains in income of other family members, so that leaving welfare per se is quantitatively more important.
• The overall gain from leaving welfare in the Three-City data is quite modest, and possibly negative, when the presence and risk of nonemployment is accounted for. The findings have significant policy implications.

• In this reply we analyzed new panel data from Michigan and found that descriptive data, estimates using the Moffitt/Winder method and our alternative fixed effect estimates all suggest that it pays to move from being a nonworking welfare recipient to being a working leaver, even if the earnings of other household members are ignored.
• Working leavers earn more per additional hour of work than do combiners, even accounting for the lump-sum loss associated with leaving welfare. Nonetheless, this income advantage, as Moffitt/Winder point out, is not large and is smaller than our 2002 article implied.
• Because the gains to work are higher in Michigan than in Boston, Chicago and San Antonio, we should be cautious in generalizing these results to the nation as a whole.

• Welfare recipients remain confused about the rules of governing receipt of benefits and many have trouble understanding time limits and work requirements.
• While health-care coverage remained high for low-income families and their children during the period under consideration, respondents who recently left the welfare system reported a worrisome drop in food stamps and WIC.
• Recent leavers, in comparison to the families who remained on welfare, report higher earnings which account for significant reductions in poverty among the group. However, on average, these gains are offset by higher expenses and a reduction in the receipt of cash and noncash benefits.
• Most families report having trouble balancing the household budget that is stretched to cover such expenses as childcare and employment-related costs. When additional costs of housing are factored into the household budget, a large percentage of low-income households experience a severe burden trying to make ends meet. Although the availability of a housing subsidy helps to reduce the burden, housing costs still extract a considerable toll on low-income families.
• Some fo the most vulnerable families still on welfare experience a confluence of forces such as material deprivation, low levels of human and social capital and poor health, which hinder their chances of transitioning off the welfare rolls and may also increase their chances of being sanctioned by the welfare system and experiencing a TANF-related case closing for rules violation.