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EVANSTON, Ill. --- A recently formed University Consortium on Welfare Reform, headed by Northwestern social policy expert Dan A. Lewis, received funding of $1.3 million from three Chicago-area foundations to study the impact of new state welfare laws on former and current Illinois recipients and their families.
The project is funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation ($600,000), the Joyce Foundation ($500,000) and the Woods Charitable Trust ($200,000).
Investigators for the ambitious six-year panel study will report annually to the Illinois General Assembly on how 1,500 welfare recipients fared in efforts to find and retain jobs and reduce dependency on public aid. The study will focus on four key issues: workforce attachment; job retention and advancement; children's well-being; and family stability.
The project is an innovative collaboration of academics and state government, with support from foundations, to produce a multifaceted portrait of the effects of welfare reform at the state level. The government will provide administrative data, and the academics will have a rare opportunity to funnel their results directly to policymakers. Systematic information, based on both administrative and survey data, will be reported to Gov. George Ryan and his department heads, state legislators, researchers, advocates and the public.
"The most important thing we can learn is the effect of time limits," said Lewis, professor of education and social policy at Northwestern and faculty fellow at Northwestern's Institute for Policy Research (IPR). "Proponents think it provides incentives to break the cycle of welfare dependency and motivate recipients to enter the workforce. Critics are scared that families will break down, women will become homeless, and spousal abuse, mental illness, and other negative consequences will increase."
Even before the federal welfare reform bill was passed, Illinois had already begun to move toward time limits and work requirements. In July 1997 the state eliminated Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and substituted Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), which ended entitlements and limited benefits to five years overall and to 24 consecutive months.
The researchers will gather information on the impact of the 60-month time limit on benefits, the employment history of recipients and their participation in other public systems such as education and child welfare. Annual reports also will provide insights on the impact of work requirements on recipients and the effectiveness of various state programs such as Work Pays, Family Responsibility and Get A Job. The 1,500-case database will be updated annually.
Lewis and his colleagues formed the consortium in response to a 1997 state law that requires data gathered by independently funded university researchers on the impact of TANF to be provided annually to the Illinois General Assembly. The state's new Department of Human Services selected the consortium to conduct the research and report its findings.
Beginning July 1, 1999, the Metropolitan Chicago Information Center will survey a random sample of 1,500 adults who were on the Illinois TANF rolls as of July 1, 1997. It will focus on welfare recipients who leave and do not return, those who cycle on and off and those who remain on the rolls throughout the study. They will be tracked until June, 2005 whether or not they remain on public aid.
The large state sample and unusually long time frame will allow the consortium to pinpoint racial and regional differences throughout the state. According to Lewis, it will be the only Illinois study and one of the few nationally to analyze differential effects on central cities, suburbs, small towns and rural areas. It also goes beyond most welfare studies by including in its analysis both whites and minorities living outside the central city. It will be able to target subgroups defined by age, family structure, education and other variables. "These differential analyses will enable us to make more informed policy," Lewis said.
Since employability and jobs are key issues for people moving off welfare, the study will examine the effects of TANF provisions for mandatory work requirements, sanctions such as enforcement of child support, the influence of education and training programs and supportive services such as child care and transportation.
Labor market factors such as wages, working hours and the types of jobs available for low-skilled, poorly educated welfare recipients also will get close scrutiny. "This will help us understand the job availability and job quality in different parts of the state and how they relate to who gets a job and who stays in a job," Lewis explained.
The researchers also hope to learn how the new welfare reform laws affect other public systems such as schools, subsidized housing, child welfare, and criminal justice, as well as food services and support for the homeless. They will look at how these systems responded to the TANF recipients and where they fell short.
Paul Kleppner, professor of political science and history at Northern Illinois University, and Stephanie Riger, professor of psychology and women's studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago are Lewis's co-principal investigators. The MCIC will manage the data collection. The Chicago Urban League and Chapin Hall Center for Children also are members of the consortium. The study will be situated at the Joint Center for Poverty Research, which is housed at Institute for Policy Research on the Northwestern campus and at the University of Chicago's Harris School. In addition to their annual reports to the Department of Human Services, the investigators plan to make their data available to other researchers by posting them on the Internet.
4/13/99