Maria Cancian

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

We use administrative data from Wisconsin to compare employment, earnings, and income outcomes for welfare leavers under early reforms and under the later, more stringent Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program. We find substantially higher rates of exit in the later period. Later leavers are somewhat more likely to work, but their earnings are lower. We also make a pre‐post comparison of individual employment and income experiences, examining a leaver’s outcomes during a calendar quarter of welfare receipt with these outcomes a year after leaving welfare. On average, substantial earnings growth is outweighed by declines in benefits, resulting in reduced total measured net income.

Who gets custody

Changes in the living arrangements of children have implications for social policy and children’s well-being. Understanding who gets custody on divorce—mother, father, or both sharing custody—can also inform our understanding of family organization and the merits of alternative theories of marriage and divorce. We examine physical-custody outcomes among recent Wisconsin divorces in an effort to understand the factors associated with shared custody as well as mother-sole custody and father-sole custody. Although mother-sole custody remains the dominant arrangement, shared custody has increased over a nine-year period. We find that the probability of shared custody increases with parent’s income. Prior marital history. parents’ ages, the age and gender of children, and the legal process also have an impact on the probability of shared custody. In contrast to shared custody, the probability of father-sole custody decreases with parent’s income, while the relationship with other significant factors is generally similar. The notable exception is that, unlike shared custody, we find no evidence for an increase over time in the probability of father-sole custody. We also find that when the father has a higher proportion of the Couple’s total income, both shared custody and father-sole custody are more likely.

The impact of wives' earnings on income inequality: issues and estimates.

We estimate the extent to which rising family income inequality can be explained by changes in the earnings of married women. We develop a decomposition equation that separates single persons from married couples (decomposition by population group) and, for married couples, distinguishes the impact of wives ’ earnings from other sources of income (decomposition by income source). Despite the rising correlation between husbands’ and wives’ earnings, changes in wives ’ earnings do not explain a substantial portion of the increase in family income inequality. Our results contradict those of some previous analyses. The inconsistency of recent esti-mates can be traced to the use of a variety of conceptually different approaches in the previous literature. We clarify these approaches by explicitly distinguishing the conceptual issues, analyzing the empirical components, and providing comprehensive estimates.

Multiple‐Partner Fertility: Incidence and Implications for Child Support Policy

Family complexity that results when adults have children with multiple partners (multiple‐partner fertility) is quite common. It also has important implications for understanding child support outcomes and for designing and evaluating welfare and family policy. Using a unique set of merged administrative data, this article provides the first comprehensive documentation of levels of family complexity among a broad sample of welfare recipients. The analyses suggest that family complexity is very common and also that complexity is associated with systematically different child support outcomes.

Economic Well-Being Following an Exit from Aid to Families with Dependent Children.

Much previous research has focused on how long families receive Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) before leaving the program and whether and when they return to the program following an exit. Few quantitative studies have looked at broader indicators of the economic well-being of those who have exited AFDC. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to trace poverty status and welfare use in the 5 years following an exit from AFDC. We find substantial diversity in economic well-being. Women who were working when they exited from AFDC do better, and, to a lesser extent, so do those who were married or had a partner when they exited. Higher levels of success are achieved by women with higher earning potential, including those with higher education and those with fewer children or older children. Although some women achieve modest levels of economic success, 41% remain poor even 5 years after an exit from AFDC. Our results highlight the distinction between leaving welfare and leaving poverty and suggest that welfare reforms targeted at reducing caseloads may do relatively little to enhance broader measures of economic success. Key Words: AFDC, poverty, self-sufficiency, welfare. The goal of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 and, to a lesser extent, of previous welfare reforms has been to move women and children off the welfare rolls. Yet we know little about the lives of women and children who have left welfare. Recent research shows that many women who exit from Aid to Families with Dependent Children return-some of them quite quickly, suggesting that life after welfare is a time of economic insecurity for many women and their children (Blank & Ruggles, 1994; Brandon, 1995; Cao, 1996; Gritz & MaCurdy, 1991; Harris, 1996; Meyer, 1993; Pavetti, 1993). But the degree of economic insecurity of those who have left welfare is not yet fully understood because the focus of research generally has been limited to examining returns to welfare. Broader measures of economic well-being are critical; leaving welfare is not synonymous with leaving poverty. As we show in our analysis, the assessment of womens economic success after leaving welfare varies substantially with the measure used. There is little analysis of the extent to which families are able to move out of poverty and into a life of self-sufficiency once they leave AFDC. This article begins to fill this gap. We analyze poverty, welfare use, and alternative sources of income for young women who left AFDC in the 1980s. After reviewing related literature and discussing our data and approach, we analyze the factors associated with womens economic success following an exit from AFDC. Understanding the level of economic wellbeing after AFDC and factors associated with well-being is particularly important in the context of current policy. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act eliminates the entitlement to cash assistance and replaces AFDC with a block grant, titled Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), to the states. Given the block-grant structure, there likely will be substantial variation in the programs that replace AFDC. Nonetheless, the legislation requires that all programs have time limits on the receipt of cash assistance and that all programs lead to substantial increases in employment. Analysis of the levels of well-being and self-sufficiency attained by women who have left AFDC in the past can provide a reference point for the design and evaluation of welfare reforms. Economic theory (as well as anecdotal evidence) suggests that women who have left AFDC in the past are likely to have better prospects of employment and marriage than many who may lose cash assistance under TANF because those with the most attractive alternatives had the greatest incentive to leave. Nonetheless, the experiences of women who have left AFDC provide some of the best information currently available on the conditions of life after welfare. …

The Effect of Additional Child Support Income on the Risk of Child Maltreatment

About 6 million children were reported to the child welfare system as being at risk of child abuse or neglect in the United States in 2010. Researchers and policy makers have long recognized that children living in families with limited economic resources are at higher risk for maltreatment than children from higher socioeconomic strata, but the causal effect of income, and particularly child support, on maltreatment risk has been challenging to establish; many of the same factors are associated with child support payment levels, poverty, and child maltreatment risk. Using a random assignment experiment that led to exogenous differences in child support received, the present analysis explores the causal role of a full pass-through and disregard of child support on the risk of child maltreatment. We find that a full child support pass-through, as compared to a partial pass-through, reduces the risk of child maltreatment.

Who Gets Custody Now? Dramatic Changes in Children's Living Arrangements After Divorce

This article reexamines the living arrangements of children following their parents’ divorce, using Wisconsin Court Records, updating an analysis that showed relatively small but significant increases in shared custody in the late 1980s and early 1990s. These changes have accelerated markedly in the intervening years: between 1988 and 2008, the proportion of mothers granted sole physical custody fell substantially, the proportion of parents sharing custody increased dramatically, and father–sole custody remained relatively stable. We explore changes in the correlates of alternative custody outcomes, showing that some results from the earlier analysis still hold (for example, cases with higher total family income are more likely to have shared custody), but other differences have lessened (shared-custody cases have become less distinctive as they have become more common). Despite the considerable changes in marriage and divorce patterns over this period, we do not find strong evidence that the changes in custody are related to changes in the characteristics of families experiencing a divorce; rather, changes in custody may be the result of changes in social norms and the process by which custody is determined.

Child Support: Responsible Fatherhood and the Quid Pro Quo

Over time, public policy changes have strengthened the private child support system while reducing access to public support—welfare. Given the especially limited availability of public support, nonresident fathers’ economic contributions through child support can play an important role in helping children to avoid poverty. In this article, the authors review evidence on nonresident fathers’ ability to pay support, provide an overview of the way child support policies affect disadvantaged fathers, and propose new directions for child support policy. The authors argue that the current work-focused safety net, which aims to require and help to enable disadvantaged mothers to work, creates a context in which government should similarly require and help to enable all fathers, even those who are disadvantaged, to work and pay child support. However, reforms are needed to make this a realistic expectation, given many fathers’ limited employment options and complex families.

Fathers of Children Receiving Welfare: Can They Provide More Child Support?

Although a number of current policy initiatives presume that nonresident fathers could provide substantially more income for their (welfare‐attached) children, several factors lead to skepticism. This article uses administrative and survey data to describe the characteristics of fathers of welfare recipients. The results suggest that most of these fathers have limited economic resources and, like the mothers of their children, often face substantial barriers to providing for themselves and their families. Balancing the needs and obligations of low‐income mothers and fathers is difficult.

The Regularity of Child Support and Its Contribution to the Regularity of Income

The declining availability of public assistance and increasing reliance on child support as a key income source for single-parent families raise questions about the adequacy and consistency of support. Using detailed Wisconsin administrative records for custodial mothers who obtained a new child support order in 2000, this study examines the regularity of child support receipt and its contribution to the regularity of total income among custodial-mother families over a 5-year period. Findings suggest variation in levels of regularity; among mothers who receive support in a given year, slightly less than half consistently receive a regular amount. The characteristics of those with any receipt of child support are found to differ on some measures from those of mothers with regular receipt. The findings also show that child support generally increases the regularity of the mothers’ total family income, especially that for mothers in low-income families.