THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY OFFICE OF NEWS AND INFORMATION 3003 N. Charles Street, Suite 100 Baltimore, Maryland 21218-3843 Phone: (410) 516-7160 / Fax (410) 516-5251
December 18, 1998 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE MEDIA CONTACT: Leslie Rice (410) 516-7160 [email protected]
HOPKINS, PARTNERS TO STUDY IMPACT OF WELFARE REFORM ON CHILDREN, FAMILIES
How will the far-reaching changes in the nation's welfare laws affect children and families in poor urban neighborhoods? When parents leave the welfare rolls, will they find steady work? Will their families face increased hardship? Will their children benefit or suffer?
These are the questions to be addressed in a four-year, $19 million study of 3,000 families in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio, by researchers at The Johns Hopkins University and several other universities.
Andrew Cherlin, the Benjamin H. Griswold III Professor of Public Policy in the Department of Sociology at Johns Hopkins, will coordinate the project. Cherlin has written widely about the changing American family and children's well-being. He will be joined on the project by Robert Moffitt, a Hopkins professor of economics, and one of the leading experts on the economic effects of welfare.
"To many people, the welfare story ends when families go off the rolls, " Cherlin said. "We want to document what happens to parents and children in the months and years afterward."
"Supporters of the new laws think that children will benefit because their mothers will find jobs, feel better about themselves and be better parents and role models. Critics think that many children will suffer because their mothers will be unable to make the transition to the work force and will face greater distress. In truth, no one knows for sure what will happen. This is the greatest social experiment with the lives of poor children since the welfare program was created during the Great Depression," he said.
The study will identify 2,800 low-income families -- half receiving welfare -- and then interview them three times over a four-year period, beginning in March 1999. It will collect much more detailed information about children's social and cognitive development than most household surveys including, for some families of pre-schoolers, visits to daycare settings, interviews with fathers, and videotaping of mothers and children doing activities together. An additional 200 families will be observed closely by field workers, who will go to job interviews with them, accompany them to the welfare office and get to know the rhythm of their daily lives. Poject collaborators will include psychologist P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale at the University of Chicago, urban policy expert William Julius Wilson at Harvard University, sociologist Linda Burton at Pennsylvania State University, and sociologist Ronald Angel of the University of Texas.
The study will be supported by grants to Johns Hopkins of $12 million from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, a unit of the National Institutes of Health; $1.2 million from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation and the Administration for Developmental Disabilities of the Department of Health and Human Services; $1 million from The W. K. Kellogg Foundation; and $500,000 from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. It will also be supported by grants to other universities from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation, the Woods Fund of Chicago, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and the Hogg Foundation. Grants from the Boston Foundation to Harvard University and the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation to Johns Hopkins supported preliminary research.
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS OF WELFARE REFORM STUDY
Andrew J. Cherlin, Benjamin H. Griswold III Professor of Public Policy in the Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Population Dynamics, Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. Cherlin has written widely about changes in the family and public policy, and is the recipient of a MERIT Award from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development that provides extended support for his research on the effects of family structure on children's well-being. Contact: Leslie Rice, 410-516-7160, [email protected]
Robert A. Moffitt, Professor of Economics, Johns Hopkins University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Population Dynamics, Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health. Moffitt has conducted numerous analyses of the economic consequences of welfare recipiency and is an expert on the methodology of program evaluation. He is also the author of a leading review article on the effects of the U.S. welfare system on labor force behavior, family structure, and fertility Contact: Leslie Rice, 410-516-7160, [email protected]
Ronald J. Angel, Professor and Chair, Department of Sociology, University of Texas at Austin. Angel is the author of numerous survey-based studies of the health of Hispanic children, of family structure and children's health, and of poverty and health among Hispanic single mothers. He will direct the research activity at the San Antonio site. Contact: Dr. Angel, 512-471-1122
Linda M. Burton, Professor of Human Development and Family Studies and Sociology, The Pennsylvania State University.Burton's extensive fieldwork has provided some of the leading ethnographic accounts of the relationship between neighborhood context and the life-course of welfare-dependent and working poor, multigenerational African-American families. She will coordinate the ethnographic studies in all cities. Contact: Vicki Fong, (814) 865-9481, [email protected]
P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, Associate Professor, Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago and a faculty associate of the Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research. Chase-Lansdale, the only developmental psychologist with an appointment at a major public policy school in the country, is a leading expert on the development of poor children and on risk and resilience in low-income families. She is particularly effective at combining in-depth psychological measurement of child and family functioning with survey methodology. She is a technical advisor on child assessment measures to the U.S. Department of Labor's National Longitudinal Surveys. Contact: Rachel P. Klein, (773) 834-3220, [email protected]
William Julius Wilson, Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.Wilson, a MacArthur Fellow, former president of the American Sociological Association, and author of The Truly Disadvantaged and When Work Disappears, is one of the nation's leading authorities on inner-city poverty and public policy.
Contact: Joe Wrinn, 617-495-1585, [email protected]
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