Research and Monitoring
In addition to the Urban Institute's Assessing the New Federalism project described above, a number of other organizations have been funded to investigate the effects of the new welfare law and its implementation. These documentation projects range from grassroots monitoring efforts sponsored jointly by the Children's Defense Fund and Coalition on Human Needs to a legislative and evaluation of welfare trends by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Center on Law and Social Policy. A number of for-profit research firms are also evaluating the outcomes of welfare reform, typically under government contracts. These firms include Abt Associates, Mathematica Policy Research, the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, and MAXIMUS.The Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR) tracks these and other monitoring activities through its Welfare Reform Research Coordination Project.26 As part of the project, IWPR has compiled a database of welfare reform researchers and analysts, and also sponsors a regularly updated electronic bulletin board.
These monitoring projects can be expected to provide valuable information about the consequences of new welfare policies. In many cases, the information would not otherwise exist. It is unlikely that state or federal officials would themselves have invested in similar reporting systems, and, in any case, the quality of public-sector data management is generally poor.27
Philanthropic
Efforts to Close the Research Gap
Grantmakers have been essential in addressing this research gap. The role
of philanthropy is particularly evident in the Urban Institute initiative,
which receives funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation with additional
support from the Commonwealth Fund, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation,
the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the McKnight Foundation,
and the Fund for New Jersey.
Grantmakers who have not directly supported TANF monitoring projects might still consider this an area in which they can add value. The raw data produced by these initiatives will surely benefit from and ought to foster secondary research which interprets and draws conclusions about TANF's impact. Grantmakers can leverage the resources already invested in gathering such data by supporting further research on the effects of welfare reform.
Many foundations are already investing heavily in such research. Important articles and studies on TANF implementation have flowed steadily from researchers and policy organizations since the passage of welfare reform. These studies help build the case for alternative policies and ultimately the need for jobs. Grantmakers have also emphasized secondary analysis that offers practical guidance to community groups. The Rockefeller Foundation, the Butler Family Fund, the Veatch Program, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and many others have provided grants to national organizations with grassroots constituencies for the preparation and dissemination of such studies.
The Continuing
Research Agenda
While studies and monitoring have made a good start, much research remains
to be done. The list of unanswered questions about TANF are extensive.
Among the promising areas of research that grantmakers might consider are
these four:
- What are the effects of welfare policies on existing workers and the low-wage employment sector in general? Does workfare lead to wage deflation? What is the extent of worker displacement? Have unemployment rates among other low-wage job seekers been affected by the influx of welfare job seekers?
- What is the availability of entry-level jobs for welfare recipients? Does a shortage of entry-level work exist in certain areas? Are there skills mismatches between job seekers and existing jobs?
- Where do individuals go once they have left the welfare rolls? What are the trends in caseload reduction? What are the causes for departure from the program (self-sufficiency or sanctions)? Are program graduates tracked longitudinally once they have a job?
- What is the relationship between welfare reform and regionalism? Does the existing transportation infrastructure connect areas of high welfare participation with areas of high job growth? Do fair housing policies allow welfare recipients to move out of concentrated poverty?
- 26 IWPR publishes a monthly Welfare
Reform Network News which provides a clearinghouse summary of major
monitoring efforts.
27 Barbara Vobejda and Judith Havemann, "States' Welfare Data Disarray Clouds Analysis; Effects of Reform are Obscured by Technical Faults, Reporting Problems," The Washington Post, April 13, 1998.
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