New Findings on Welfare and Children's Development: Summary of a Research Briefing (1997)

A major goal of federal and state welfare reform has been to increase the employment of welfare-dependent women. The new federal law encourages reforms under which women with very young children are included in welfare-to-work programs, in initiatives that limit the amount of time they receive welfare benefits, and in required unpaid work experience. Employment, however, has long been a strategy of survival for poor and welfare-dependent women, most of whom receive welfare for relatively short periods of time, and many of whom mix welfare receipt and work, some of which is "off the books." Two studies indicate that about one-half of all mothers work for at least some time while on welfare (Edin, 1995; Harris, 1993).

Previous studies on the possible effects of welfare receipt have tended to examine the effect on children of mothers' transitions on and off welfare, without considering the effects of maternal employment (instances in which mothers work "off the books" in such part-time and transient jobs as babysitting, sewing, and bartending, as well as those in which women combine AFDC and employment legally) and of unemployment. Consideration of this phenomenon is especially important given many states' experiments with income disregards, programs through which welfare recipients work and continue to receive welfare for a specified period.

Research presented at the briefing by Judith Smith and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn of the Center for Children and Families at Columbia University's Teachers College (Smith et al., 1996) considered the effects on children of mothers' combination of welfare receipt and employment.⁶ The study found that children's development was not compromised when their mothers combined employment with welfare receipt. The researchers examined both the effect of maternal welfare receipt combined with employment and the effect of maternal welfare receipt without the supplement of employment on children's cognitive outcomes at ages 5. Specifically, the study compared the effect on children whose mothers were receiving welfare either with or without an employment supplement during a 3-year time frame with those whose mothers were employed and did not receive welfare during the same 3 years.

Children whose mothers received welfare and were employed exhibited more positive outcomes on measures of verbal ability and reading achievement than children whose mothers received welfare but were unemployed. This finding took into account mother's education, race, age at birth of child, family income over the first 3 years of the child's life, and the child's gender, health status, and birthweight. The outcomes for children in families receiving welfare in which the mother worked, although worse, did not differ significantly from those of children in families in which the mother worked but did not receive welfare; see Figure 2.

Importantly, however, Smith and her colleagues found that mothers who combined work with welfare receipt were somewhat better educated and had higher average incomes than those who received welfare but did not work, factors that were taken into consideration in the analyses. Thus, the researchers believe that a woman's education is important in explaining which welfare mothers are likely to enter the workforce without any government requirement to do so. Their findings also raise the question of whether welfare alone (compared with welfare and employment) is disadvantageous to children because families on welfare alone have less income or whether welfare as a source of income is problematic for children's development when not combined with income from work.

It is important to recognize that this research examined the effects of a mother's choice to supplement welfare receipt with earned income and may not generalize to programs that mandate work and simultaneously discontinue welfare benefits. A full picture of the effects of maternal employment among the poor also needs to consider the developmental effects of the child care arrangements that enable these mothers to work.

This research raises a number of questions: What role does the source of income (e.g., earned or welfare) play in children's development, in comparison with the level of income, regardless of source? What aspects of income (e.g., type, level, predictability) encourage families to save for such purchases as improved housing, better education, and cars that facilitate transportation to work and child care—factors that, in turn, may promote healthy development in the long term? How do child care environments mediate the effects of maternal employment among low-income families? How do the flexibility, stability, and timing (during the childhood years) of parental work affect children's development?