Changing Policies, Changing Impacts: Employment and Earnings of Child‐Care Subsidy Recipients in the Era of Welfare Reform

Queralt, Magaly; Witte, Ann Dryden; Griesinger, Harriet

doi:10.1086/516426

Cited by 24 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Increasing funding per poor child from $434 in fiscal year 1997 to $511 in fiscal year 1998 is associated with mothers increasing their probability of working by 4.7 percentage points. These results are similar to results obtained using data for Miami-Dade County, Florida (Queralt et al, 2000;.…”

Section: Child Care Effectssupporting

confidence: 88%

Child Care and the Welfare to Work Transition

Lemke

Witte

Queralt³

et al. 2000

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Abstract: We assess the role of child care in the welfare to work transition using an unusually large and comprehensive data base. Our data are for Massachusetts, a state that began welfare reform in 1995 under a federal waiver, for the period July 1996 through August 1997. We find that both the nature of the child care market and the availability and policies of subsidized care and early education affect the probability that current and former welfare recipients will work. Regarding the child care market, we find that the availability of care is most consistently related to employment. However, the price and quality of care also matter. We also find that increased funding for child care subsidies, and the availability of full day kindergarten and Head Start significantly increase the probability that current and former welfare recipients work. Higher state payments to providers are associated with increased probabilities of work. Finally, recipients are more likely to work when they are subject to a work requirement. The effects of imposing time limits on cash assistance are less clear. Terms of use: Documents in

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Section: Child Care Effectssupporting

confidence: 88%

Child Care and the Welfare to Work Transition

Lemke

Witte

Queralt³

et al. 2000

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“…For example, Florida has an explicit priority system that it uses to allocate child care subsidies (see Queralt, et al, 2000 for a description), while Massachusetts has an implicit set of priorities that give preference to current and former cash assistance recipients over income-eligible families who have not participated in the cash assistance program (see Lemke, et al, 2001). The equity of some priority systems could be challenged.…”

Section: Indicators Of Trade Offs In Child Care Policiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Take-Up Rates and Trade Offs After the Age of Entitlement: Some Thoughts and Empirical Evidence for Child Care Subsidies

Witte¹,

Queralt²

2002

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In this paper we develop a model of an eligible family's decision to take or not to take child care subsidies. This decision depends on the net benefits the family expects to derive from the subsidies over their expected duration. We contend that such a demand-side model for the take-up of child care subsidies and use of the term "take-up" rate are only appropriate for programs that guarantee services to all eligible applicants. After welfare reform, most states do not offer such guarantees. For states that do not guarantee subsidies, the proportion of the eligible population that receives subsidies is better called a service rate than a take-up rate. Modeling service rates requires consideration of both governments' decisions (the supply side) and families' decisions (the demand side) regarding child care subsidies.We survey the general literature on take-up rates for social welfare programs and review existing estimates of the take-up rates and service rates for child care subsidy programs in various states. Using administrative data and survey data for states that guarantee subsidies for all eligible families, we estimate the family-level take-up rate for child care subsidies to be around 40% in early 2000. For states that do not guarantee subsidies, service rates range from 14% in Minnesota to 50% in Massachusetts.Finally, we suggest indicators to assess the trade offs that governments are making when designing and funding their child care subsidy programs. We use the percent of federally eligible families that receive child care subsidies and public expenditures per subsidized child to discern the relative importance that states place on using child care subsidies (1) to facilitate parental work and (2) to prepare its future work force by improving services to low-income children. For Rhode Island, we find increasing emphasis on the latter between 1996 and 2000. We also find that the Illinois subsidized child care program places relatively more emphasis on parental work facilitation, while Minnesota's program makes a more substantial investment in children through relatively more comprehensive and in-depth services. In the human services, the term "take-up rate" generally refers to the proportion of the population eligible for a particular social welfare program that participates in the program. The reasonably large literature on take-up rates suggests that they vary considerably across programs. Specifically, recent surveys indicate that take-up rates range from 43% for the Qualified Medicare Beneficiary program to 99% for Medicare Part A. Take-up rates also vary as a result of using different estimation methodologies. For example, the estimated take-up rate for programs such as AFDC, Food Stamps and Medicaid, while consistently above 45%, shows a 20% to 25% variation across studies depending on methodologies used (Craig, 1991; Remler, Rachlin and Giled, 2001; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2001).In recent years, researchers have reported take-up rates for child care subsidies that...

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“…In order to understand the effects of FIP on the employment and earnings of low-income families in RI, the impacts of these more general economic effects must be separated from the effects of the changes in the state's social welfare programs. Building upon ongoing work in Massachusetts and Florida (Queralt, Witte, and Griesinger, 2000;Lemke, Witt, & Witte, 2001), we use econometric modeling to evaluate the impact of the FIP program in Rhode Island on the likelihood of employment and earnings of low-income families.…”

Section: Acknowledgmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To do this, we follow Eissa and Liebman (1996), Lemke, et al (2001), Meyer andRosenbaum (2001), Moffitt (1992) and Queralt, et al (2000). Table 1 lists the policy variables included as explanatory variables in our estimation.…”

Section: F F I P P a H C S D L M C C =mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Note that we have included separate variables for children that are of public school age. (See Blank, 1997;Eissa & Liebman, 1996;Harris, 1996;Kim & Mergoupis, 1997;Lemke, et al, 2001;Pavetti & Acs, 1997;and Queralt, et al, 2000 for reviews of the literature on socio-demographic factors affecting employment and earnings.) We control for Community Characteristics (CC) by including a series of community-specific binaries.…”

Section: F F I P P a H C S D L M C C =mentioning

confidence: 99%

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