Research on the Effects of the U.S. Welfare System on the Low Income Population

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In this application, a request is made for a second five years of a MERIT award initially titled "Welfare Benefits and Family Structure: A Reconciliation." The central task in the first five years was to replicate several of the best and most well-known studies of the effect of welfare benefits on family structure, to reconcile their disparate findings to arrive at a consensus estimate of that important effect, and to draw recommendations for policy. Much progress has been made in the first five years on this task and important findings have been made. Considerable difficulty was experienced in replicating all the four main studies, for initial replication based on the published study and upon available data failed in part or in whole. After much work and discussion with the original four authors, the findings of the original studies were replicated in full for three of the four. In one case the findings were overturned because of an error made in the original analysis, in another the findings were weakened, and in the study which could not at all be replicated, the best estimates showed much weaker effects. Thus the analysis in the first five years significantly changes the conclusions drawn from these studies.'ln the next period of the award, it is proposed to continue this important exercise by moving to formulation and estimation of a common model on all data sets and the formulation of a best model, and conclusions will be drawn on what the overall evidence suggests the effect of welfare benefits on family structure to be. The analysis will also be extended to the post-1996 period. Finally, it is proposed to extend the scope of the project to include other welfare-research related activities of the principal'investigator. Specifically, it is proposed to extend the scope to include (i) research on The Three-City Study, a major NICHD-funded survey of the low income population in three US studies to examine their behavior and well-being after welfare reform; (ii) analysis of a survey of state TANF rules regarding cohabitation and marriage currently underway under the principal investigator's direction; (iii) the study of the labor supply and family structure responses to the 1996 US welfare reform legislation; and (iv) a few activities planned for the study of welfare reform and its effects on the low-income population in the U.S. Given the expansion of scope, the project has been retitled, "Research on the Effects of the U.S. Welfare System on the Low Income Population."