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Policy Framework
The 1996 federal welfare reform law devolved to states unprecedented control over welfare policy while requiring a dramatic overhaul of their welfare rules and services. Launched in 1997, the Project on Devolution and Urban Change is chronicling the changes that reform has wrought in the lives of low-income families and in the institutions that serve them. By examining welfare reform as it plays out in big-city neighborhoods — where the nation’s caseload is increasingly concentrated — the project aims to inform policymakers’ and program operators’ efforts to fully realize the 1996 law and its reauthorization and to identify and address service gaps.
Agenda, Scope, and Goals
The Urban Change project addresses the following key questions:
- What policies have state and local officials formulated in response to the 1996 law, and how are these policies carried out by welfare agency staff?
- What are the effects of the new law on welfare receipt and employment?
- How have welfare recipients and other low-income urban residents fared in the new welfare environment? Which groups are better and worse off?
- How have social and economic conditions in big cities changed since 1996? In particular, how have poor neighborhoods fared?
Design, Sites, and Data Sources
The project is measuring a wide range of family, program, and neighborhood outcomes in four large urban counties — Cuyahoga (Cleveland), Los Angeles, Miami-Dade, and Philadelphia — through five research components:
- Implementation. Description of the new welfare initiatives — rules, messages, benefits, and services — that have been developed at the state and local levels and their implementation by local welfare agencies.
- Administrative records. Measurement of the new policies’ effects on welfare receipt, employment, and earnings, based on administrative records for all welfare and food stamp recipients in each county.
- Longitudinal surveys. Interviews with a randomly selected sample of 1,000 cash assistance and food stamp recipients in each county were conducted in 1998 and 2001 to track changes in the sample's circumstances over time. (Participants were asked about their labor market experiences, material well-being, use of public and private social services, health, housing conditions, and children’s well-being.)
- Ethnography. Longitudinal interviews with 30 to 40 welfare-reliant families in each county to find out how they are coping with the new welfare rules and policies.
- Neighborhood indicators. Analysis of statistical indicators that reflect the social and economic health — before and after 1996 — of urban counties and of neighborhoods within them that have high rates of poverty and welfare receipt.
What's Next
In March 2007, MDRC released a report updating the welfare reform story in Cleveland and Philadelphia through 2005.
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