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Evaluating Food Assistance Programs in an Era of Welfare Reform

Author : National Research Council and Institute of Medicine

Publisher : National Academies Press

Page : 72 pages

File Size : 45,91 MB

Release : 1999-06-10

Category : Medical

ISBN : 0309184487

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Book Description

This report was prepared in response to a request from the Economic Research Service (ERS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). It summarizes the discussions at a February 1998 workshop convened by the Committee on National Statistics; the Board on Children, Youth, and Families; and the Food and Nutrition Board. The fiscal year 1998 (FY1998) appropriations bill for USDA gave ERS responsibility for all research and evaluation studies on USDA food assistance programs. The bill provided $18 million to fund these studies, an increase from $7 million in FY1997. ERS asked the Committee on National Statistics for assistance in identifying new areas of research and data collection and in further improving the evaluation studies of food assistance programs. By bringing together many who work on evaluation of food assistance programs, policy analysis, survey methods, nutrition, child nutrition and child development, outcome measurement, and state welfare programs, the issues presented and discussed at the workshop provided ERS with information that could be used to develop a framework for their research program.



Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition

Author : Panel on Data and Methods for Measuring the Effects of Changes in Social Welfare Programs

Publisher : National Academies Press

Page : 276 pages

File Size : 45,28 MB

Release : 2001-08-24

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 9780309072748

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Book Description

Reform of welfare is one of the nation's most contentious issues, with debate often driven more by politics than by facts and careful analysis. Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition identifies the key policy questions for measuring whether our changing social welfare programs are working, reviews the available studies and research, and recommends the most effective ways to answer those questions. This book discusses the development of welfare policy, including the landmark 1996 federal law that devolved most of the responsibility for welfare policies and their implementation to the states. A thorough analysis of the available research leads to the identification of gaps in what is currently known about the effects of welfare reform. Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition specifies what-and why-we need to know about the response of individual states to the federal overhaul of welfare and the effects of the many changes in the nation's welfare laws, policies, and practices. With a clear approach to a variety of issues, Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition will be important to policy makers, welfare administrators, researchers, journalists, and advocates on all sides of the issue.



Evaluating Welfare Reform

Author : National Research Council

Publisher : National Academies Press

Page : 159 pages

File Size : 22,78 MB

Release : 1999-12-04

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 0309066492

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Book Description

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 fundamentally changed the nation's social welfare system, replacing a federal entitlement program for low-income families, called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), with state-administered block grants, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. PRWORA furthered a trend started earlier in the decade under so called "waiver" programs-state experiments with different types of AFDC rules-toward devolution of design and control of social welfare programs from the federal government to the states. The legislation imposed several new, major requirements on state use of federal welfare funds but otherwise freed states to reconfigure their programs as they want. The underlying goal of the legislation is to decrease dependence on welfare and increase the self-sufficiency of poor families in the United States. In summer 1998, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) asked the Committee on National Statistics of the National Research Council to convene a Panel on Data and Methods for Measuring the Effects of Changes in Social Welfare Programs. The panel's overall charge is to study and make recommendations on the best strategies for evaluating the effects of PRWORA and other welfare reforms and to make recommendations on data needs for conducting useful evaluations. This interim report presents the panel's initial conclusions and recommendations. Given the short length of time the panel has been in existence, this report necessarily treats many issues in much less depth than they will be treated in the final report. The report has an immediate short-run goal of providing DHHS-ASPE with recommendations regarding some of its current projects, particularly those recently funded to study "welfare leavers"-former welfare recipients who have left the welfare rolls as part of the recent decline in welfare caseloads.



Informing Food and Nutrition Assistance Policy

Author : Priscilla Smith

Publisher : DIANE Publishing

Page : 62 pages

File Size : 23,32 MB

Release : 2009-05

Category : Health & Fitness

ISBN : 1437911056

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Book Description

About 1 in 5 Americans participates in at least one of USDA¿s food and nutrition assistance programs. Sound research is needed to ensure that the programs operate effectively and efficiently. Since 1998, Congress has provided funds to the USDA¿s Food Assistance and Nutrition Research Program (FANRP) to study and evaluate the Nation¿s domestic food and nutrition assistance programs. FANRP has become the premier source of food and nutrition assistance research in the U.S., sponsoring over 600 publications on a wide range of topics related to food and nutrition assistance. This report, prepared at the 10-year anniversary of the FANRP program, highlights some of the key research conducted during the program¿s first decade.





For Better and For Worse

Author : Greg J. Duncan

Publisher : Russell Sage Foundation

Page : 338 pages

File Size : 24,83 MB

Release : 2002-01-17

Category : Social Science

ISBN : 1610448286

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Book Description

The 1996 welfare reform bill marked the beginning of a new era in public assistance. Although the new law has reduced welfare rolls, falling caseloads do not necessarily mean a better standard of living for families. In For Better and For Worse, editors Greg J. Duncan and P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale and a roster of distinguished experts examine the evidence and evaluate whether welfare reform has met one of its chief goals-improving the well-being of the nation's poor children. For Better and For Worse opens with a lively political history of the welfare reform legislation, which demonstrates how conservative politicians capitalize on public concern over such social problems as single parenthood to win support for the radical reforms. Part I reviews how individual states redesigned, implemented, and are managing their welfare systems. These chapters show that most states appear to view maternal employment, rather that income enhancement and marriage, as key to improving child well-being. Part II focuses on national and multistate evaluations of the changes in welfare to examine how families and children are actually faring under the new system. These chapters suggest that work-focused reforms have not hurt children, and that reforms that provide financial support for working families can actually enhance children's development. Part III presents a variety of perspectives on policy options for the future. Remarkable here is the common ground for both liberals and conservatives on the need to support work and at the same time strengthen safety-net programs such as Food Stamps. Although welfare reform-along with the Earned Income Tax Credit and the booming economy of the nineties-has helped bring mothers into the labor force and some children out of poverty, the nation still faces daunting challenges in helping single parents become permanent members of the workforce. For Better and For Worse gathers the most recent data on the effects of welfare reform in one timely volume focused on improving the life chances of poor children.



Policy Creation and Evaluation

Author : Richard Hoefer

Publisher : Oxford University Press

Page : 230 pages

File Size : 15,37 MB

Release : 2012

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 0199735190

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Book Description

Although practitioners do not often identify an explicit focus on social welfare policy, the analysis (what it is) and evaluation (what it does) of policy is basic to social work practice. This unique pocket guide presents a case study on one of the most important domestic policy decisions in the post-WWII era, the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996. This law ended welfare as we knew it by creating the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program and closing the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program.Examining the law through three decision-making models assists readers in understanding TANF's historical antecedents, its political and power implications, and the way in which it meets social and economic goals. Individual chapters demonstrate how programs such as TANF are evaluated and the methods that can be used, such as primarily qualitative, primarily quantitative, and mixed methods evaluation techniques. Illustrating the advantages and disadvantages of each approach for evaluation, Hoefer makes use of the numerous studies undertaken in the thirteen years since welfare reform and its 2006 reauthorization. Part history text, readers will also learn about the details of the TANF legislation creation and evaluation, but will finish with a greater understanding of the policy creation and evaluation processes.This pocket guide will be useful to researchers and students of advanced social policy who seek to understand the two stages of policy-making, to develop policy, or to describe the impact of social policy on social problems.



The New World of Welfare

Author : Rebecca M. Blank

Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield

Page : 530 pages

File Size : 46,73 MB

Release : 2004-05-13

Category : Political Science

ISBN : 0815798377

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Book Description

Congress must reauthorize the sweeping 1996 welfare reform legislation by October 1, 2002. A number of issues that were prominent in the 1995-96 battle over welfare reform are likely to resurface in the debate over reauthorization. Among those issues are the five-year time limit, provisions to reduce out-of-wedlock births, the adequacy of child care funding, problems with Medicaid and food stamp receipt by working families, and work requirements. Funding levels are also certain to be controversial. Fiscal conservatives will try to lower grant spending levels, while states will seek to maintain them and gain additional discretion in the use of funds. Finally, a movement to encourage states to promote marriage among low-income families is already taking shape. The need for reauthorization presents an opportunity to assess what welfare reform has accomplished and what remains to be done. The New World of Welfare is an attempt to frame the policy debate for reauthorization, and to inform the policy discussion among the states and at the federal level, especially by drawing lessons from research on the effects of welfare reform. In the book, a diverse set of welfare experts—liberal and conservative, academic and nonacademic—engage in rigorous debate on topics ranging from work experience programs, to job availability, to child well-being, to family formation. In order to provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of research on welfare reform, the contributors cover subjects including work and wages, effects of reform on family income and poverty, the politics of conservative welfare reform, sanctions and time limits, financial work incentives for low-wage earners, the use of medicaid and food stamps, welfare-to-work, child support, child care, and welfare reform and immigration. Preparation of the volume was supported by funds from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation.





Welfare Reform

Author : United States. General Accounting Office

Publisher :

Page : 60 pages

File Size : 11,52 MB

Release : 1997

Category : Food stamps

ISBN :

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Book Description