Stigma and other determinants of participation in TANF and Medicaid.

We developed a conceptual framework to examine the association between stigma, enrollment barriers (e.g., difficult application), knowledge, state policy, and participation in the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) and adult Medicaid programs. Survey data from 901 community health center patients, who were potential and actual participants in these programs, indicated that while images of the Medicaid program and its recipients were generally positive, stigma associated with welfare stereotypes reduced both TANF and Medicaid enrollment. Expectations of poor treatment when applying for Medicaid, enrollment barriers, and misinformation about program rules were also associated with reduced Medicaid enrollment. States that enacted strict welfare reform policies were potentially decreasing TANF participation, while states with more simplified and generous programs were potentially increasing Medicaid participation. The results suggest that the image of the adult Medicaid program remains tied to perceptions about welfare and provides guidance to policymakers about how to improve participation rates.     

Section 8 and Movement to Job Opportunity: Experience after Welfare Reform in Kansas City

Abstract

This research addresses the extent to which tenant‐based rental assistance, before and after welfare reform, helps households move to areas with greater opportunities for employment. It was thought that the threat of losing their welfare benefits would encourage participants in the Section 8 program to use the mobility it offers to move to neighborhoods with greater opportunities for employment.

Two samples of Section 8 program participants, one taken before welfare reform and the other taken after it was enacted, have been examined. With the strong economy after welfare reform, more Section 8 households are employed and fewer are on welfare. However, the analysis finds that, independent of welfare reform, households did not use their housing subsidy to move to areas with greater opportunities for employment. Program participants typically remained in racially concentrated areas of the central city, away from those neighborhoods with job growth or large numbers of jobs.     

Welfare policies and migration of the poor in the United States: An empirical note

This paper has investigated the impact of geographic welfare benefit differentials upon migration in the United States. Unlike other related studies, which typically focus upon black migration (as a surrogate measure of migration of the poor), the present study focuses directly upon migration of the poor per se. A variety of reduced-form estimates are provided. The evidence strongly suggests that the net in-migration of the poor is positively and significantly influenced by higher nominal AFDC levels and by higher real AFDC levels. These findings support the welfare magnet hypothesis, which alleges that relatively high welfare levels act to attract poor migrants. Moreover, given that poor migrants are attracted non only by high nominal welfare levels but also by high real welfare levels, an argument can be made for establishing geographically uniform real welfare benefit levels in the United States. This uniformity presumably should act, over the long run, to eliminate the human resource distortions being caused by the currently prevailing welfare system.The authors are indebted to Michael Greenwood, Dick Muth, Jim Kau and Janet Pack. Naturally, the usual caveat applies.     

A Holistic Theoretical Model for Examining Welfare Reform: Quality of Life

Policy makers, public administrators, the media, and others are celebrating the "success" of the latest version of welfare reform, codified into law by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Most often, success is defined in terms of declining case loads or some other economic measure—a practice that does not provide a true sense of the impact of policy changes such as welfare reform. Assessing the human impact of policy change requires more than evaluating economic outcomes; it requires knowing the resources of beneficiaries of social services and their conditions of life from various perspectives. Thus, we must strive for greater understanding about the sociocultural aspects of people's lives that create the whole person—aspects such as health, family and friendship networks, housing situations, public and private support service and program use, conditions of work, and so forth. This is how we come to understand one's quality of life. The present research creates a conceptual model of quality of life and illustrates the model using data from a follow–up study of former welfare recipients in a county in northern Virginia. Evaluation activities that are premised on a quality–of–life model will help policy actors understand the impact of policies and how public institutions can be managed strategically within their very complex contexts, especially in an era of welfare reform.     

Local Governments' Fiscal Responses to Welfare Reform

The devolution of the social safety net means that local governments must increasingly respond to the needs of their citizens, particularly those who are coming off the welfare rolls and making the transition to work. Based on our findings from a statewide, randomized experiment, this article describes how welfare reforms have affected the well-being of current and former welfare recipients. We look specifically at how those leaving welfare in Indiana are using the township trustee system, the state's general assistance program providing poor relief, to meet basic needs, as well as how the trustees have responded to welfare reform.     

Medicaid's Role in Moves Toward Universal Health Care

This paper considers the problems currently facing the Medical Assistance (Medicaid) program in light of the major problems confronting the American health care system. Actual and proposed Medicaid reforms are reviewed, their merits noted and their shortcomings detailed. It is argued that substantial Medicaid reform can take place only in the context of radical reform of the entire U.S. health care system. Similarly, Medicaid should be incorporated into any plan aimed at providing universal health care coverage.     

Implementing Welfare Reform in Kansas: Moving, But Not Racing

Will welfare reform lead some states to race to the bottom?At least for Kansas, the answer appears to be a resounding no.Data gathered as part of the State Capacity Study's analysisof welfare reform suggest that in Kansas, elected officialsand the bureaucracy have responded in a fashion consistent withthe state's political and administrative culture: cautiouslyand incrementally. First, Kansas' welfare reform policy hasbeen driven primarily by bureaucratic decisions. Welfare administrators,supported by the governor, have minimized legislative resistanceto their policy objectives. Second, from the perspective ofwelfare generosity, Kansas has not deviated significantly fromits typical "middle" position relative to other states' policies.Third, Kansas' administration of reform embraces three primarystrategies: decentralized management authority; new links withother agencies to tackle specific welfare problems; and a newlyintegrated approach to frontline welfare case-management.     

Obligation and welfare policy

Ronald Reagan came to the White House with a reputation for welfare reform that dated from his days as governor of California. The administration's first step was to restrict benefits to working recipients in ways similar to procedures originally proposed in that state. The impact on the AFDC caseload of these changes, however, was modest, and, ironically, the work program opportunities provided by legislation sponsored by the Reagan administration have been exploited as successfully by Democrats such as Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts as by Republicans. Despite frequent references to welfare and welfare problems since 1981, the administration has been notably short of ideas.The silence from the White House has been filled by outsiders - first Murray and then Mead and others such as journalists Mickey Kaus (1986) and Nicholas Lemann (1986). While Losing Ground argued for the government's retirement from the field in the War on Poverty, Mead offered a vision certain to make both liberals and the administration uncomfortable. On the one hand, his demand for creative statecraft calls for substantial government activism, a renewed attack. On the other, his assertion that further progress will require attention to behavioral issues challenges the liberal attitude that what the poor need most is the empowerment that cash can provide. For the concerned public, something about Mead's argument rings true. The poverty we see - homeless derelicts, children of mothers who are children themselves, recipients who reach midlife never having known anything but welfare dependency, neighborhoods in which everyone receives support - hardly seems vulnerable to negative tax payments. And, as Mead suggests, eliminating the present system would create unacceptable hardship. Even if financial incentives are the prime movers in most areas of economic life, we are all a bit embarrassed by them; in the abstract it seems better to say that absent parents are obligated to support their children and able-bodied adults are obligated to work.     

The Federal Role in State Fiscal Stress

This article examines the extent to which the federal government'spolicies were responsible for the fiscal stress experiencedby most state governments in the early 1990s. Federal policieshave contributed considerably to recent state fiscal stress,particularly through the Medicaid program—the fastestgrowing part of state budgets—and the recession, whichdepressed revenue and increased welfare and Medicaid spending.Federal aid reductions have not been an important source ofrecent state fiscal stress. The real value of per capita federalaid other than for welfare programs fell considerably in the1980s, but the reductions were much greater for local governmentsthan for states. The largest reductions were in the early 1980s.Federal policies have affected state finances in several otherways—through tax policy, unfunded mandates, and the federalfailure to cope effectively with problems like health and poverty.Federal court rulings have also caused budget problems (as havestate court decisions). In some respects, state fiscal problemsare not a federal responsibility. Rising school enrollments,new corrections policies, and inelastic tax systems have createdfiscal stress for many states. Excessive state spending in the1980s has contributed to recent fiscal problems in some states,but not generally.     

The new supplemental security income—Implications for other benefit programs

Supplemental Security Income (SSI), a federal assistance program for the needy aged, blind and disabled, replaced the old federal-state welfare programs in January 1974. The enactment of this income floor, following a decade of revolutionary growth in aid to these three groups, may precipitate further program reform. First, the VA pension program aiding a beneficiary group similar to that of SSI, could be merged with SSI into a single federal program. Second, SSI may mark a turning point in the development of the social security system. A federally-administered income floor for the poor who are elderly or disabled can relieve social security of the welfare elements built into that system in an earlier period, allowing its original function of wage-replacement to be improved. A reorientation of social security vis-à-vis SSI would also allow a more equitable treatment of persons covered under one or both programs.     

Costs of Cooperation Rather than Competition in the Provision of Justice?

The civil law reforms starting in the USA and exemplified by Lord Woolf's reform package(1995; 1996) in the U.K. are considered in the context of diminishing legal aid and pressure on judges to become case managers responsible for the economic performance of their courts. The reforms are being sold in a package that promises a fairer system for all, greater access, cheaper and quicker justice, less stress and greater party control. This move from the welfare state to a civil society is analysed using Habermas's critical theory in an effort to uncover and debate its assumptions. Specific recent changes in civil procedure in Queensland are referred to in this context.     

Has welfare reform changed teenage behaviors?

Data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth 1979 and 1997 cohorts were used to compare welfare use, fertility, educational attainment, and marriage among teenage women in the years before and immediately following welfare reform. The first objective was to document differences between these cohorts in welfare use and outcomes and behavior correlated with entry into welfare and with future economic and social well‐being. The second objective was to investigate the causal role of welfare reform in behavioral change. Significant differences were found between cohorts in welfare use and in outcomes related to welfare use. Furthermore, difference‐in‐differences estimates suggest that welfare reform has been associated with reduced welfare receipt, reduced fertility, and reduced marriage among young women who, because of a disadvantaged family background, are at high risk of welfare receipt. Finally, in the post‐welfare reform era, teenage mothers are less likely to receive welfare and are more likely to live with at least one parent than in the pre‐reform era. Establishing more definitively that welfare reform is responsible for these changes will require further investigation. © 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

And the question is? Knowledge growth in welfare policy research

This study examines how federally sponsored research questions about welfare policy have evolved from 1981 to 2001, through a content analysis of Requests for Proposals (RFPs). We treat the RFP as a document that identifies what information is sought as well as what is treated as established knowledge. Results show that research questions represent a mixture of constancy and change. The greatest similarity in research questions is in the areas of employment and earnings/income, with greater variability in the areas of family formation and child outcomes. The research questions, notwithstanding their sophisticated terminology, often boil down to who the poor are, how welfare recipients can be coaxed or forced into the labor market, whether fundamental work supports such as health insurance and reliable childcare are helpful in sustaining employment, and whether welfare is implicated in pregnancy, marital behavior and multi-generational poverty. We interpret these findings in relation to concepts on research utilization.

On the front lines of welfare delivery: Are workers implementing policy reforms?

The impact of policy changes on the local delivery of services has been overlooked in several decades of largely unsuccessful efforts to “reform” welfare. This article uses one case of state-level welfare reform in the early 1990s to examine the implementation of policy changes in local welfare offices. Direct observation of transactions between welfare workers and clients suggests that policy reforms were not fully implemented by street-level bureaucrats. The instrumental transactions that continued to dominate interactions with clients were consistent with processing claims and rationing scarce resources, but they were poorly aligned with new policies aimed at changing the services and message delivered to welfare clients. The failure to fully implement reforms on the frontlines has implications for the achievement of policy objectives and for equity in service provision. Implementation issues will have even greater urgency as welfare is devolved from federal to state governments.     

房价“双轨制”的双重效应与政策取向

房价"双轨制"是指目前我国住房市场并存的两种价格制度体系,房价"双轨制"具有利弊双重效应:适应"渐进式"改革和不完备市场体系的需要,符合现阶段多元化社会结构解决和改善住房条件的需求,有利于调动房地产商的积极性,明确政府的责任,促进社会的和谐稳定。但房价"双轨制"与商品的本质和市场经济原则相矛盾,在运行操作上有很大的难度,容易造成社会福利的流失和形成新的社会不公平。房价"双轨制"的政策取向是:在供需矛盾突出的体制过渡时期不能取消而且要继续强化房价"双轨制",促进住房公平,加大保障性住房建设力度,增加住房的有效供给。     

Making Something Out of Nothing: Welfare Reform and a New Race to the Bottom

The 1996 welfare-reform law has been characterized as a significantact of devolution. For some, this devolution will free statesto become "laboratories of democracy" that develop better welfarepolicies; for others, it will provoke a debilitating "race tothe bottom" where states will reduce benefits out of fear ofbecoming "welfare magnets" that attract recipients from otherstates. This article suggests that neither "laboratories ofdemocracy" nor "race to the bottom" does justice to the complexitiesof the 1996 reforms. In the case of the former, new federalmandates limit state action and states face informal pressuresto "keep up" with one another in developing new restrictionsso that they can avoid becoming "welfare magnets." In the caseof the latter, we find limited empirical support for the existenceof welfare migration that is supposed to be provoking a "raceto the bottom." We find that there is limited welfare migrationbecause the real value of welfare benefits to recipients doesnot vary nearly as much as common portrayals suggest. Giventhese realities, welfare reform may produce a procedural raceto the bottom that turns the myth of migration into a self-fulfillingprophesy.     

Changes in the welfare caseload and the health of low-educated mothers.

Declines in the welfare caseload in the late 1990s brought significant change to the lives of many low-educated, single mothers. Many single mothers left welfare and entered the labor market and others found different ways to avoid going on public assistance. These changes may have affected the health and health behaviors of these women. To date, there has been little study of this issue. In this paper, we obtained estimates of the association between changes in the welfare caseload caused by welfare policy, and four health behaviors--smoking, drinking, diet, and exercise--and four self-reported measures of health--weight, days in poor mental health, days in poor physical health, and general health status. The results of our study reveal that recent declines in the welfare caseload were associated with less binge drinking, but otherwise welfare reform had little effect on health and health behaviors.     

The impact of welfare reform on local labor markets

We develop a local labor market information system to assess the labor market effects of recently adopted welfare reform laws. Using the Cleveland-Akron metropolitan area as a prototype, we develop an occupationally and geographically specific inventory of projected job openings and measure the skill mismatch between projected job openings and the welfare population likely to enter the labor market. We find the skill mismatches are quite large: Following implementation of reform, welfare recipients entering the labor force would initially have to claim anywhere from 34 to 61 percent of expected low-skill job openings in order to become fully employed. Labor market opportunities are further diminished if one takes into account the effect of gender and space in limiting job accessibility. Welfare recipients entering the labor market as a result of reform would require from 40 to 75 percent of jobs remaining if predominately male occupations are removed from consideration. The AFDC recipients who depend on public transportation, even in extraordinarily long commutes, can access only 40 to 44 percent of entry-level job openings. © 1998 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

新中国成立以来社会福利制度的演变与发展——基于社会权利视角的分析

新中国成立70年来,社会福利制度体系经历了深刻的变迁。尝试从社会权利视角出发,通过构建福利资格准入、福利制度安排和福利结果的解释框架,对四个历史阶段的社会福利制度演变进行梳理和分析,可以发现:新中国的社会福利制度经历了"国家主义"统揽、"发展主义"主导、新世纪初期政策扩张和新时代政策深化的变迁过程,并面临严峻的现实挑战。为了建构新时代中国特色社会福利制度体系,应该克服福利发展上的认知悖论,重视福利制度安排的积极作用,着力解决福利责任主体不清的问题,形成多元的社会福利供给模式,并通过改变社会福利制度碎片化格局,构建统一公民身份的"社会中国"。     

Housing,Welfare Reform,and Self‐Sufficiency: An Assessment of the Family Self‐Sufficiency Program

Abstract

Recently passed welfare reform legislation may have adverse impacts on the incomes of public and assisted housing residents and hence on the rental income of housing authorities. One way to dampen these impacts is to help welfare‐reliant tenants find jobs. The Family Self‐Sufficiency (FSS) programs sponsored by many housing authorities may be an important means of doing this. This article presents the findings of an early study of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's FSS program and explores the program's potential for dampening the impacts of welfare reform. The study involved a mail survey of the coordinators of 564 FSS programs.

The survey results indicate a surprising lack of interest in the early FSS program among potential participants. The results also indicate that these programs are inadequately staffed, and that the programs’ potential to dampen the effects of welfare reform are limited by the relatively small percentage of welfare‐reliant residents enrolled.