ABSTRACT
Underlying the public and policy debates prior to the passage of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) was a concern for the well-being of low-income children. Some argued that children may benefit from reforms of welfare and employment policy, because parents may respond to work incentives by increasing their earnings and becoming self-sufficient and thus may provide a role model for children as well as have increased resources for investing in their children. Others argued that children may bear the cost of welfare reform if balancing employment with family responsibilities increases parents' stress and negatively affects their parenting abilities or if children are consequently left unsupervised or exposed to poor quality or unsafe care arrangements. In fact, little is known about the effects of the most recent welfare reform initiatives-which include work mandates, time limits, and enhanced earnings disregards-on children's outcomes. This is partly because the ways in which maternal employment and income affect children more generally are not well understood.
