Life after Welfare: Women, Work, and Repeat Dependency

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.. American Sociological Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Sociological Review. I examine the process by which single mothers who have ever experienced and ended a spell on welfare return to welfare for further economic support. My analyses address the permanency of welfare independence by type of exit and identify those women who manage to stay off welfare. I use the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) for the years 1983 to 1988; the data contain monthly reports of welfare receipt (AFDC) and employment status. Returns to welfare are quite common and often occur soon after leaving: Over one quarter of the women in this study return to welfare within one year of exiting, and 42 percent return within two years. I find that repeat dependency on welfare is determined by social isolation, child-care responsibilities, human capital, and family economic status. Moreover, the route by which women exit welfare is less important to their chances of remaining off welfare than is the sequence of life events and changing circumstances that occur after their welfare exit. R esearch interest in women and poverty has heightened over the last decade as increasing numbers of women and children face economic disadvantages. The continued growth of female-headed households, coupled with stagnant wages at the low end of the wage distribution during the 1980s, has increased poverty among women and children. By 1992, over 80 percent of persons in poor families were women and chil-* Direct all correspondence to Kathleen Mullan Harris,

Before and After TANF: The Economic Well‐Being of Women Leaving Welfare

“…(For national studies, see, for example, Harris, 1996;Meyer and Cancian, 1998;and Pavetti and Acs, 1997. For studies in individual states or groups of states, see, for example, Brauner and Loprest, 1999;Friedlander and Burtless, 1995;Loprest, 1999; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1999a,b;U.S. General Accounting Office, 1999.…”

Substance abuse and the course of welfare dependency.

“…Although they do a good job at establishing the work and family predictors of welfare dependency, prospective studies have not typically gathered data on recipients' drinking and drug use. [7][8][9][10][11] Researchers have only been able to speculate about the impact that substance abuse might have on welfare use (e.g., perhaps giving rise to work impairments or to weak incentives for leaving welfare)." 3 The present study, which evaluated alcohol and drug problems in representative samples of welfare recipients followed over a 6-year period, is the first to prospectively examine substance abuse as a determinant of subsequent welfare dependency.…”

Cultural dimensions of workfare and welfare

“…Harris (1996) found that a significant proportion of those leaving welfare (most of whom would be single parents) did not remain off welfare for long. One key factor that helped significantly in avoiding welfare "recidivism" was marriage/cohabitation; those who remained single had higher-thanaverage rates of return to welfare.…”