Welfare, Children, and Families:
Results from a Three City Study
A Congressional Briefing
Friday, May 17, 2002
9:OO -- 11:00 a.m.
1539 Longworth House Office Building
(refreshments will be served)
The Three City Study is examining the consequences of welfare reform on the well-being of children and families. The study is tracking 2,400 low-income families, about 40% of whom receive welfare in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio. A primary focus is the health and development of children. The four-year project consists of three components: 1) A longitudinal survey of mothers and preschoolers (0-4 years) and adolescents (10-14 years); 2) A developmental study of children ages 2-4 that includes videotaped interaction with their mothers, interviews with their fathers, and observations while at childcare settings; and 3) An ethnographic study of the three cities, which will provide a more in-depth picture of 215 families and show the influence of welfare reform on neighborhood resources and state and local child services. The briefing will present results from the study.
Speakers:
Dr. Ronald J. Angel, Professor of Sociology, University of Texas, Austin
“Health Care Coverage among Poor Families”
Dr. P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale, Professor of Education and Social Policy,
Northwestern University
“Welfare Reform and Children”
Dr. Andrew Cherlin, Professor of Public Policy, Johns Hopkins University
“Welfare Reform and Marriage”
Dr. Robert Moffitt, Professor of Economics, Johns Hopkins University
“The Impact of Welfare Reform on Employment and Income”
Sponsored by:
Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA)
(with generous support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation)
Positive RSVPs to COSSA at cossa@cossa.org or 202/842-3525 or 202/842-2788 (FAX)
Ronald Angel: Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on the health and health care needs of vulnerable and underserved populations, including children in poor families and the elderly. As part of the Three City Study he is examining the extent of public and private health insurance coverage among poor families and the consequences of changes in Federal and state policies on access to health insurance, especially for Mexican Americans, a population with extremely low rates of coverage. In addition to publishing numerous articles, he has co-authored two books with his wife, Jacqueline Angel, focused on the health of children in single parent families and the long-term care needs of the elderly, Painful Inheritance: Health and the New Generation of Fatherless Families, University of Wisconsin Press, 1997, and Who Will Care For Us?: Aging and Long-Term Care in Multicultural America, New York University Press, 1993. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in and spent nine years at Rutgers University before moving to Texas.
P. Lindsay Chase-Lansdale: Professor in the School of Education and Social Policy and a faculty fellow of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. She is also a faculty associate of the Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research. She is Co-Principal Investigator of Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three-City Study, and directs the Embedded Developmental Study, which focuses on preschool aged children, their childcare, and their parents. A developmental psychologist, Chase-Lansdale is an expert in the interface between research and social policy for children and families, having spent a year as a Congressional Science Fellow and three years as Associate Director of the Washington Office of the Society for Research in Child Development. She is Chair-Elect of the board of directors of the Foundation for Child Development, a board member of Jobs for Youth-Chicago, and a member of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Network on the Family and the Economy. Her Ph.D. is from the University of Michigan.
Andrew Cherlin: Benjamin H. Griswold III Professor of Public Policy in the Department of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. He is the coordinator of the interdisciplinary research project, Welfare, Children, and Families: A Three-City Study. He is a recipient of a MERIT Award from the National Institutes of Health for his research on the effects of family structure on children. He is a past President of the Population Association of America. His books include Public and Private Families: An Introduction (second edition, 1999), Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage (revised and enlarged edition, 1992), and Divided Families: What Happens to Children when Parents Part (with Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr., 1991). Cherlin’s recent articles include “Going to Extremes: Family Structure, Children’s Well-Being, and Social Science,” in Demography; “By The Numbers,” in The New York Times Magazine; and (with William Julius Wilson) “The Real Test of Welfare Reform Still Lies Ahead,” in The New York Times. His Ph.D. is from UCLA.
Robert Moffitt: Professor of Economics at Johns Hopkins University and has served on the faculties of Brown University and the University of Wisconsin. He is an expert on the economics of welfare reform and his research on the U.S. welfare system has included studies of AFDC, TANF, Food Stamps, Medicaid, and others, examining economic and family structure outcomes. He is currently associated with the Institute for Research on Poverty, the Joint Center for Poverty Research, and the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is a past member of the advisory board for the Panel Study on Income Dynamics and the National Longitudinal Survey, and has served on several other government and non-government advisory committees. He serves on the Division on Behavioral, Social Sciences and Education (DBASSE) committee at the National Academy of Sciences, where he was also Chair of their Panel on Data and Methods for Welfare Reform. He is a current and past editor of several professional peer-reviewed scholarly journals in economics. Moffitt received his Ph.D. is from Brown University.