ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to address gaps in the literature by estimating state-specific impacts of welfare reform policies on four outcomes of single mothers: welfare utilization, employment, personal earnings, and family income. It explores the relationships among the impacts on different outcomes. The chapter analyzes how the estimated impacts differ according to several broad categorizations of state welfare policies. In 1996, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) fundamentally changed the nature of public assistance programs in the United States. Most importantly, PRWORA increased the level of work expectations. To reify average welfare and work effects is to fail to distinguish between strategies that have positive and deleterious consequences for the well-being of single mothers and their children. B. D Meyer and J. X Sullivan analyze changes in the consumption expenditures of single mothers using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and the Consumer Expenditure Survey.
