Project: Welfare Reform Effects on Food Assistance Use and Family Well-Being
Award Year: 1998
Amount of award, fiscal 1998: $300,000.00
Institution: University of Michigan
Principal Investigator: Sandra Hofferth
Status: Completed
Detailed Objective: This work examines three aspects of the effects of welfare reform:
  • the proportion of low-income families and single individuals who received food assistance before and after welfare reform and the characteristics of food assistance recipients before and after welfare reform;
  • changes in the pattern of spells of cash public assistance and food-stamp receipt; and
  • changes in economic resources and food expenditures of low-income individuals and families and changes in food insecurity between 1997 and 1999 among low-income families with children under age 13.

The work uses the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a prominent longitudinal nationally representative survey, which has returned to the same group of families over the years from 1968 to the present. It is administered through the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. Because it is longitudinal, it is particularly well-suited for analyzing changes in conditions for individual families over time, including changes in their program participation status and in their food insecurity status. A cooperative research agreement in the amount of $300,000 was awarded to The Regents of the University of Michigan in September 1998. A final report is expected to be completed in September, 2001.

Topic: Welfare Reform
Dataset: Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID)
Output:
Hofferth, S. "Did Welfare Reform Work? Implications for 2002 and Beyond," Contexts, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring 2002.
Hofferth, S. Persistence and Change in the Food Security of Families With Children, 1997-99, E-FAN-04-001, USDA, ERS, March 2004.
Hofferth, S., S. Stanhope, and K. Harris. "Exiting Welfare in the 1990s: Did Public Policy Influence Recipients' Behavior?" Population Research and Policy Review, Vol. 21, Issue 5, October 2002.
Wilde, P., S. Hofferth, S. Stanhope, M. Noonan, and N. Collins. "Pre-1997 Trends in Welfare and Food Assistance in a National Sample of Families," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Vol. 82, No. 3, August 2000.