Economic Conditions and Welfare Reform.

• Author: Rosenbaum, Dan T.

Edited by Sheldon H. Danziger.

Kalamazoo, MI: W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 1999. Pp. vii, 321. $22.00 (paperback).

Perhaps nothing makes a good empirical researcher more uncomfortable than being asked to speculate on the effects of policy changes that represent a big departure from previous policy. Economic Conditions and Welfare Reform is an intriguing collection of essays that presents this exact challenge to several of the top welfare policy researchers across the country. The nine papers in this volume (presented as part of a conference organized by the Joint Center for Poverty Research) ask the authors to "use their analyses to predict what is likely to happen to welfare caseloads, to recipient well-being, and to state budgets and policies when the next recession arrives" (p. 2). Given that the "next recession" is now upon us, it is hard to imagine a more timely collection of essays.

The papers in this volume are among the first to explore the implications of the new era for the welfare system in the United States, ushered in with the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) in August 1996. PRWORA ended the entitlement to cash support for low-income single-parent families by abolishing Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and replacing it with block grants to the states, that is, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. TANF allows states more discretion in setting rules for their welfare programs, and has intensified the emphasis on work for most single parents receiving public assistance by placing time limits on cash support (five years for most families) and by mandating some form of work as a requirement for cash support.

Yet policy changes aimed at increasing work among welfare recipients started well before 1996. For example, beginning in the early 1990s, many states were granted waivers to their AFDC programs, which states used to encourage work among AFDC recipients, often instituting time limits or work requirements similar to those implemented on a broader scale as part of PRWORA in 1996. It is important to note that most of the papers in this book use these early experiences with state waivers to the AFDC program to predict how later welfare reform efforts will affect caseloads and state budgets. [1]

The first four papers of this volume tackle an important but difficult question: How much of the recent decline in AFDC/TANF...