ABSTRACT
The National Survey of America's Families is a series of nationally representative surveys conducted in 1997 and 1999, with a third survey completed in the fall of 2002, to permit comparisons between households before and after welfare reform. Although few tears were shed over the death of the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, both advocates and opponents of the 1996 welfare reform law were concerned about how the new law would affect low-income families. Administrative studies will describe the changes in health and welfare systems in each state and take an intensive look at thirteen states both before and after Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). The chapter demonstrates the prospects of the several major research projects designed to provide empirically based findings about how well low-income families fared before and after PRWORA, how those prospects varied from state to state, and whether those trends can be credibly attributed to PRWORA.
