Friday, October 9, 2009: 2:20 PM
Objectives:
The aim of this study is to undertake a comprehensive analysis of the effects of welfare reform on adult women’s educational acquisition. We estimate the impact of welfare reform on high school dropout of teenage girls, both to improve on past research on this issue and to explore compositional changes that may be relevant for our primary analyses of the effects of welfare reform on the educational acquisition of adult women. We also explore the mediating role of work in our analyses.
Data / Methods:
The analysis utilizes individual records from the October Current Population Surveys spanning 1992-2001. Estimates are derived from a difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) framework, which exploits variation in the timing of welfare policies across states and conducts a conditional pre- and post-comparison with treatment and control groups. A number of alternative models are estimated as specification checks, which support the robustness of these results and also support the validity of the counterfactual assumption underlying the DDD estimates.
Results:
Estimates indicate that welfare reform has significantly increased the probability of young women from disadvantaged families staying in high school, by about 10-14 percent. In contrast, welfare reform has significantly decreased the probability of high school and college attendance among adult women, by 20-25 percent.
Discussion:
The opposing effects for teens and adult mothers underscore the differential educational incentives for the two groups that are built into welfare reform. This study fills an important gap in the welfare reform literature and suggests that the gains from welfare reform in terms of increasing employment and reducing caseloads may have come at a cost—lower educational attainment among women at risk for relying on welfare. This finding may have negative implications for poor mothers’ ability to attain self-sufficiency and experience upward mobility, given the evidence of substantial earning gains from even one year of community college.
The aim of this study is to undertake a comprehensive analysis of the effects of welfare reform on adult women’s educational acquisition. We estimate the impact of welfare reform on high school dropout of teenage girls, both to improve on past research on this issue and to explore compositional changes that may be relevant for our primary analyses of the effects of welfare reform on the educational acquisition of adult women. We also explore the mediating role of work in our analyses.
Data / Methods:
The analysis utilizes individual records from the October Current Population Surveys spanning 1992-2001. Estimates are derived from a difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) framework, which exploits variation in the timing of welfare policies across states and conducts a conditional pre- and post-comparison with treatment and control groups. A number of alternative models are estimated as specification checks, which support the robustness of these results and also support the validity of the counterfactual assumption underlying the DDD estimates.
Results:
Estimates indicate that welfare reform has significantly increased the probability of young women from disadvantaged families staying in high school, by about 10-14 percent. In contrast, welfare reform has significantly decreased the probability of high school and college attendance among adult women, by 20-25 percent.
Discussion:
The opposing effects for teens and adult mothers underscore the differential educational incentives for the two groups that are built into welfare reform. This study fills an important gap in the welfare reform literature and suggests that the gains from welfare reform in terms of increasing employment and reducing caseloads may have come at a cost—lower educational attainment among women at risk for relying on welfare. This finding may have negative implications for poor mothers’ ability to attain self-sufficiency and experience upward mobility, given the evidence of substantial earning gains from even one year of community college.