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Findings Available
Interim Implementation Findings
Interim Impact Findings
Interim Descriptive/Analytical Findings
Findings
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02/01/97:
A Better Chance Evaluation: First-Year Evaluation Progress Report
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Interim Implementation Findings:
"Administrators’ perceptions reflect their unique position as intermediaries between policy makers and front-line workers. Interviews suggested that managers endorsed the goals and many provisions of ABC and clearly understood their responsibilities for implementing the program as designed. At the same time, interviewees had serious concerns about a number of the reform’s provisions"(33).
"A primary challenge in implementing ABC was preparing staff for their new responsibilities. Two themes consistently emerged in workers’ comments about the preparation for ABC: 1) staff desired additional guidance on how to implement ABC policies; and 2) staff saw a need for consistent communication on policy and procedural changes"(Appdx B, p5).
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12/01/97:
A Better Chance Evaluation: The Early Economic Impacts of Delaware's A Better Chance Welfare Reform Program
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Interim Impact Findings
“Impact analyses reveal that the changes induced moderately strong impacts on employment rates, average earnings and welfare payments. By the fourth quarter after random assignment, the employment rate was eleven percentage points higher for treatment (56%) than control (45%) group members. Average earnings for the fourth follow-up quarter were $167 higher (representing a 16% proportionate effect), and average welfare payments were $76 lower (an 18% proportionate effect), These impacts compare favorably with those from several other recent state demonstrations” (ii).
“The reduction in cash assistance payment occurred even though there was no statistically significant net impact on the percent of families receiving welfare. ABC’s ‘fill-the-gap’ policy, designed to ‘make work pay,’ allows recipients to receive some assistance when their earnings reach levels that previously made families ineligible. A rough calculation suggests that among treatment group members, as many a six- percent would not have been eligible for cash assistance except for fill-the-gap. Subtracting these families from the observed 56% welfare receipt rate for the treatment group members yields an adjusted rate of 50%- nine percentage points below the 59 percent rate observed for control group members” (ii)”
“Treatment group members evidenced broad familiarity with the new policies, but also a need for better comprehension of detailed rules. For example, 84% said they were aware their assistance was time-limited, but only 27% knew the initial time limit was 24 months…Control group members mostly understood that they were not subject to ABC policies. Nearly four-fifths (79%) scored low (saying less than three items applied) on an ABC policy index, compared to 44 percent of treatment group members. Although a substantial treatment-control knowledge gap was created, some control group members may have been led by what they heard in the media or ‘on the street’ to believe they were subject to parts of the reform. The estimated impacts therefore may understate ABC’s full early impacts somewhat” (iii).
“A variety of program start-up difficulties resulted in lower-than-desired rates of participation in new work services administered by the state’s Department of Labor. The shift to a ‘work first’ approach nonetheless is evident in the participation statistics. More treatment (15%) than control (9%) group survey respondents said they have participated in work activities. Identical fractions (13%) of the two groups reported participation in education and training activities” (iii)”
“A vigorous campaign to enforce financial sanctions was the earliest administrative response to noncompliance with ABC requirements. By March 1997, nearly half (49%) of all recipients enrolled in ABC from October 1995 to September 1996 had received one or more sanctions. The sanction rate for noncompliance with work and training requirements (41%) was higher than the rate for noncompliance with family responsibility rules (22%). These sanction rates are much higher than those characterizing the previous generation of welfare reforms in Delaware and elsewhere, and must be considered as a strong potential contributing factor in any observed impacts” (iv).
“ABC’s work and training sanctions progress through three states can lead ultimately to permanent ineligibility for cash assistance. To determine how sanctions were being resolved, a group of clients under sanction in December 1996 was followed for a six-month period. By June 1997, less than a quarter had cured their sanctions, another quarter remained under sanction, and more than half has left assistance. It’s too early to tell whether the low compliance rates implied by these statistics will increase in the longer-term. The recent advent to innovate case management-based ‘compliance service’ contracts may lead to improved sanction outcomes” (iv).
“Beneath the surface of ABC’s small net impacts on welfare receipt, descriptive evidence suggests some important changes in welfare dynamics. Treatment group members who left welfare were somewhat less likely to attribute their exits to increased earnings (50% of exits) than control group members (63%). This findings is consistent with the suspicion that fill-the-gap was operating to extend assistance for working recipients to ease their transitions to self-sufficiency. There is also evidence that ABC hastened some families’ exits for reasons other than increased earnings. A majority of treatment group members who said ABC influenced their welfare exits said the reason was related to dislike of, or negative experiences with, new ABC requirements and sanctions”(iv).
“Subgroup analyses suggest ABC’s impacts on employment and welfare participation were concentrated among clients with medium duration (one or two years) of previous welfare receipt. There was little evidence of impacts either for clients who had spent less than one years, or three or more years, on assistance of the five preceding random assignment. Reports from earlier welfare-to-work demonstrations finding a similar pattern suggest a plausible explanation. Because the lease welfare-reliant clients are relatively employable and motivated, they may have less need for ABC’s work services and incentives. At the other extreme, long-term recipients have many more serious barriers and may not be able to respond as quickly to ABC’s services and incentives” (v).
“Many non-welfare agencies are concerned about the potential ramifications of sanctions and time limits on the demand for services beyond cash welfare assistance. At this early juncture, there is little evidence to increased utilization in a variety of alternative public and private assistance programs. To the contrary, ABC produced slightly lower receipt of food assistance from food stamps and food banks among treatment than control groups members. The program also resulted in a small (4 percentage point) positive impact on reported receipt of child support payments through government agencies. ABC had no impact on average household income after its first year. Positive earnings impacts apparently were offset by program-induced reductions in average welfare payments and other income sources” (v).
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Interim Impact Findings:
“The findings suggest ABC sanctions are influenced by varied implementation and personal factors. That large office differences remain even after accounting for socioeconomic differences across offices is strong testimony to the adage that local implementation matters. The analyses do not identify specific features of implementation that were responsible. The list of likely candidates includes staffing arrangements, office leadership, sanction procedures, and attitudes- especially belief in sanctions as a tool and willingness to pursue other remedies. The role of implementation practices in varying sanction experiences likely is much greater than the office differences reveal, since it is individuals workers within offices who ultimately implement sanctions (21).”
“At the client’s end, measures of understanding and ability to comply with ABC rules were more strongly associated with sanctions than indicators of motivation, suggesting that difficult circumstances have had at least as much to do with noncompliance as unwillingness to play by the rules. It should be acknowledged that only limited indicators for motivation, understanding, and ability to comply were available. Also, effects for several background variables may be reflecting motivational sources of sanctioning: for example, long-term recipients may have lower motivation to meet new requirements than new applicants (21).”
“Nonetheless, there is strong evidence that factors other than motivation explain much noncompliance. This finding is important, since sanctions are not likely to be effective for clients who already are willing to meet requirements. Giving workers more tools to better discriminate and differentiate responses when cooperation is due to unwillingness to comply, and when it arises from other circumstances, could lead to a more effective sanction policy (21).”
“Finally, the fact that clients who are sanctioned are more socially and economically disadvantaged that those who are not belies the conjecture that many clients accept sanctions because they already have ready access to replacement income. The finding also raises the prospect that sanctions may leave recipients who already have relatively modest means even more disadvantaged than they were before (21).”
“For curers, sanctions may have led to improvements in behaviors linked to work and family outcomes- assuming offenses cured were in fact defiant behaviors in the first place, and not merely failures to report these behaviors to the welfare office. Among voluntary leavers, sanction-induced exits may suggest increased efforts to find alternative means of financial support or decisions by clients with alternative financial means already (e.g. unreported income) to cut their losses. Although voluntary leavers technically leave welfare at their own initiative, they presumably do so under duress, and their post-welfare situations therefore cannot automatically be assumed to represent net improvements. This group’s social and economic fortunes will depend on the nature and amount of support available from whatever alternatives to welfare are found, including options as diverse as: regular employment; reliance on family, friends, and other public and private agencies; marriage and cohabitation; and illegal economic activities (24).”
“Finally, as a group, outcomes for nonresponders seem unlikely to be as positive as for the other groups of sanctioned clients. Nonresponders’ characteristics suggest relatively lower access to alternative opportunities, and the involuntary nature of their exists itself suggests potential difficulty in responding well to any ensuing financial difficulties. Consequently, potential seems weakest for positive economic outcomes for this group, and any resulting increase in financial stress and/or maternal hardship could have deleterious consequences for family functioning (25).”
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08/01/99:
A Better Chance Evaluation: Do Welfare Recipients' Children Have a School Attendance Problem?
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Interim Descriptive/Analytical Findings:
“Absenteeism is greater for welfare children than for other children. Income differences account for a large share of this absenteeism, especially among teenagers” (ii).
“Parent surveys yield reasonably accurate estimates of absenteeism for welfare children and of differences in absenteeism between welfare children and other children” (iii).
“Most absences among welfare children arise from illness rather than truancy” (iii).
“ABC workers have been enforcing the school attendance policy. Low truancy rates suggest that a substantial part of the process currently is devoted to verifying attendance for non-truant children” (iv).
“Because they monitor attendance directly and serve all poor children, school are the most logical place to locate interventions to reduce truancy. Family services provided by welfare agency social workers potentially could provide a valuable resource for schools seeking to bring parents into the picture” (v).
“Better knowledge of how to help parents address high absenteeism and other problems is needed” (vi).
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06/30/99:
A Better Chance Evaluation: Will Welfare Reform Influence Marriage and Fertility? Early Evidence from the ABC Evaluation
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Interim Impact Findings:
ABC offers the first evidence that comprehensive state welfare overhauls can influence welfare recipients’ marriage and childbearing decisions. After only eighteen months of operations, ABC had modest positive impacts on marital cohabitation among women who were under age 25 and those with less than 12 years of education. The reform also raised marriage expectations among women with less than 12 years of education, but led fewer better-educated women to expect to marry. Although ABC had only a small impact on actual fertility in one subgroup, it sharply reduce desires for more children among women with intermediate durations of past welfare receipt, women who were 25 of age or older, and those who had never married.
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03/01/99:
A Better Chance Evaluation: A Better Chance for Welfare Recipients? What the Public Thinks
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Interim Impact Findings:
“More than half the public believes that benefits should not increase when welfare recipients have more children, consistent with current ABC policy. Respondents believe recipients will be more careful and have fewer children under such a policy.
“Delawareans support continued provision of cash assistance to teen parents, whereas the State stopped providing cash benefits for babies born to unmarried minor parents after December 1998. Eliminating cash welfare also is the least popular route to reducing teen childbearing among a series of alternatives explored.
“The public respond favorably to two possible elements of a new welfare diversion strategy — a one-month applicant job-search period and a lump-sum payment of up to six months’ worth of regular cash payments” (iii).
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12/01/00:
A Better Chance Evaluation: Impacts of Welfare Reform on Child Maltreatment
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Interim Impact Findings: The findings show that ABC increased the fraction of families with an incident of child neglect by around one percentage point in the first and third, but not the second, year of follow-up.
The program had no statistically significant overall impacts on other kinds of maltreatment, such as physical and emotional abuse or sexual abuse, or on foster care placements.
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01/01/01:
A Better Chance Evaluation: Turning the Corner: Delaware's ABC Program at Four Years
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Interim Impact Findings: Findings provided here summarize the early challenges Delaware faced in implementing ABC, and welfare recipients’ experiences over roughly a two-and-a-half-year follow-up period.2 The study finds that Delaware implemented a strict, work-oriented program that fundamentally altered the State’s welfare system. In refashioning its cash welfare program, the State’s Department of Health and Social Services’ Division of Social Services (DSS) made many basic changes in policies and procedures, administrative arrangements, and services. Delaware strongly enforced Contracts of Mutual Responsibilities requiring clients to participate in work activities and meet specified parenting responsibilities. The program had a number of significant impacts on clients, of which the most striking was a reduction in welfare use. Thanks to Delaware’s strong economy and no-nonsense work program, the vast majority of clients went to work during at least part of the follow-up period. However, few participants achieved economic independence within the study period, and the majority still was struggling to make ends meet.
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08/01/01:
A Better Chance Evaluation: How Have They Fared? Outcomes After Four Years for the Earliest DABC Clients
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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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