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Policy Framework
The welfare system has been transformed over the past two decades, notably through the introduction of stricter work requirements and time limits on cash assistance in the 1990s. At the same time, government at both the federal and the state level invested in offering financial work supports of unprecedented scope to low-income parents. A top priority on the national agenda was to understand how these changes in the safety net — and sharp rises in employment, particularly among single parents — are affecting children.
Long before the federal welfare reforms of 1996 drew attention to this question, MDRC — in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and other government, foundation, and research partners — was systematically gathering data about children in its studies of pioneering efforts to promote employment among low-income parents. These studies laid the groundwork for the Next Generation project — a collaboration that began in 1999, involving MDRC, several other leading research institutions, and the project’s foundation funding partners. Drawing on 10 studies by MDRC of welfare, antipoverty, and employment policies piloted as early as the 1980s and widely adopted since then, Next Generation is synthesizing and reanalyzing data to learn how programs targeted at parents' economic circumstances affect children’s school performance, behavior, and health, as well as measures of family well-being.
Agenda, Scope, and Goals
The Next Generation project aims to inform policymakers, practitioners, and scholars by identifying lessons that cut across evaluations of individual welfare, antipoverty, and work programs. With a focus on how such programs can influence children’s and families’ well-being through their effects on employment, income, and child care, the project addresses questions such as:
- How do programs that share certain effects on parents’ economic outcomes — for instance, that boost employment or income — affect children? What combinations of economic effects harm or benefit children most?
- How do different types of child care assistance shape patterns of child care use among low-income parents? What are the consequences for children’s well-being?
- Do the programs affect children of different ages differently? If so, how?
- What can we learn from in-depth interviews with families subject to welfare reform about the daily challenges they face and how public policies can address their needs?
Design, Sites, and Data Sources
The Next Generation project draws data and perspectives from 10 rigorous studies conducted by MDRC, including the Project on Devolution and Urban Change and random assignment evaluations of the following programs:
Because of the variety of policy approaches, data sources, and methodologies represented, Next Generation can delve deeper into the programs’ effects on children and families than could any single study. The project derives statistical reliability from the large size of its aggregate database. Together, the underlying evaluations encompass tens of thousands of parents and children across North America.
Owing to the richness of the underpinning research, the Next Generation team can make new discoveries without collecting new information. All the findings rest on secondary analysis of primary data, which include administrative records of employment and public assistance receipt, surveys of parents and teachers, and ethnographic interviews. The project’s synthesis approach is facilitated by the use of comparable measures of children’s and families’ well-being in many of the studies.
Findings
Next Generation findings reflect five research areas: (1) the effects of welfare and employment policies and child care policies; (2) the pathways by which policy effects occurred; (3) methodological advances in leveraging experimental data; (4) the effects of income level and employment on children and adolescents; and (5) the effects of child care on children.
Key findings regarding welfare and employment policy include: (1) programs targeting parents’ employment and income (through generous supplements to earnings) benefited children’s school achievement, while programs targeted at parents’ employment but not their income had few effects, either positive or negative, on participants’ children; and (2) the effects of welfare and employment policies vary by child age, with positive effects of welfare and antipoverty policies for children making the transition into middle childhood, and negative effects of these same policies for children making the transition out of middle childhood and into early adolescence.
With regard to the effects of employment, income, and child care pathways on children, Next Generation research concluded that:
(1) program-induced income gains but not concurrent changes in parental employment and welfare receipt account for improvements in young children’s school achievement. A $1000 increase in income has a small, but policy-relevant, 6 percent of a standard deviation causal effect on the school achievement of children transitioning into elementary school;
(2) these effects may be influenced by increases in the use of center-based care by these parents;
(3) maternal employment was not found to affect young children, but employment entry is linked with a negative effect on adolescent schooling, perhaps in part because of increased sibling care responsibilities; and
(4) maternal job loss appears to have large negative effects on young children’s behavior in school.
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