Friday, 14 January 2005 - 8:00 AM

This presentation is part of: Welfare Reform

Who Has Fallen Behind? 1999-2003 Georgia Welfare Reform Panel Data

Purpose: Welfare policy priority to work has contributed to self-sufficiency of the welfare families, especially young single mother who entered into the paid job market, but welfare reform itself has failed to reduce the number of welfare families living in poverty. Despite suspicion about the relationship between TANF and poverty, very little attention has been paid to well-being tracked by same TANF recipients. This study examines time effect on economic well-being across multiple former TANF groups and identifies the factors associated with the prevalence of living in extreme poverty.

Methods: Panel data from Georgia Welfare Reform Research, which was conducted in 1999, 2001, and 2003, provides comprehensive information about family types, income resources, living arrangements, and employment barriers among a random sample of 201 TANF recipients in Georgia, who were receiving welfare in July 1999. The sample size was calculated to achieve a confidence interval of 92.5 percent. Repeated measures analyses of variance are used to examine the longitudinal time effect and group effect on their economic well-being. Groups were compared by householder, work or marriage, and barriers to self-sufficiency. Family groups identified as struggling with very low income, were entered in the equation of logistic regression models estimating the probability of being extremely poor.

Results: The percentage of extremely poor families increases twice as much and reached approximately 23% of former TANF families in 2003. Repeated measures statistics report that there are significant interaction effects between waves and groups. Married [F(2,30)=7.400, p=.003], working single [F=4.835(2,46), p=.013], and no barrier [F(1.66,34.90)=9.915, p=.001] families had statistically significant income improvement for last four years, and each householder group had some improvement but not significant, whereas nonworking single and each barrier group has no improvement at all. Logistic regression procedures controlling for other variables, report that extreme poverty in 2003 is associated with age [adjusted odds ratio (AOR)=.927], neither working nor married family [AOR=5.686], family with disability [AOR=7.443], still on TANF [AOR=3.702], and those receiving SSI with health problem [AOR=.032].

Implications for practice: Increasing extreme poverty among previous TANF families implies that welfare reform designed to encourage work should not neglect the families unable to work and discourage them from receiving public assistance. Findings also indicate that participation in SSI could reduce extreme poverty but TANF, Food Stamp and Child Support programs are less effective in anti-poverty programs. Reports on welfare reform research, data analysis and implications for social work practice will be presented.

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