Reagan's Welfare Reforms: Were the Program Savings Realized?

This paper provides a discussion of the impact of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981 (OBRA) on AFDC caseloads and expenditures. Intervention analysis and regression analysis are used to examine whether OBRA resulted in either temporary or permanent changes in the levels of these variables. This study indicates that while OBRA may have resulted in a decline in AFDC caseloads, it did not have a significant effect on total AFDC expenditures.