POPULATION

 DIVISION 

The Effect of Work and Welfare on 

Living Conditions in Single Parent 

Households 

by 

Kurt J. Bauman 

Working Paper Series No. 46 

August 2000 
WORKING PAPER NO. 46 

The Effect of Work and Welfare on Living 

Conditions in Single Parent Households 

by 

Kurt J. Bauman 

Population Division 

U.S. Census Bureau 

Washington, DC 20233-8800 

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meetings of the 

Population Association of America, New York, March 1999. 

This paper reports the results of research and analysis undertaken by 

Census Bureau Staff. It has undergone a more limited review than 

official Census Bureau publications. This report is released to inform 

interested parties of research and to encourage discussion. 

ii 
Abstract 

Recent changes to programs of income support for the poor have focused attention on 

how work requirements and incentives affect earnings and employment of welfare recipients. 

The predominant way of thinking of these issues, at least in broader political discourse, assumes 

that obtaining work or improving wages are desirable goals for welfare recipients and their 

families. However, recent research has begun to indicate that single parents and their families are 

not always better off in the labor force. This paper uses the 1991 and 1992 panels of the Survey 

of Income and Program Participation to examine welfare, work and well-being in a broader 

context. The paper finds an apparent advantage of work over welfare for most households, but 

not for single parent households. In addition, material hardship is found to have strong effects on 

subsequent labor market participation and welfare use. 
The Effect of Work and Welfare on Living Conditions 

in Single Parent Households 

Introduction. 

Recent changes to programs of income support for the poor have focused attention on 

how work requirements and incentives affect earnings and employment of welfare recipients. 

The predominant way of thinking of these issues, at least in broader political discourse, assumes 

that obtaining work or improving wages are desirable goals for welfare recipients and their 

families. However, recent research has begun to cast doubt about this assumption. 

When the choice between welfare and work (or a combination) is voluntary, as was 

commonly taken to be the case in past research, it was not always essential to have a full 

accounting of the costs of moving from welfare to work. Unmeasured costs could be inferred 

from decisions. Now that most welfare programs are limiting eligibility in a way that makes work 

mandatory, it is more important to be able to account for these costs. These include direct costs 

such as foregone benefits and daycare, which have become a subject of closer scrutiny. 

However, other costs remain difficult to measure. These include loss of time, variance of income, 

unreliability of daycare and increased problems in complying with program rules. 

Recent research has begun to indicate that single parents and their families are not always 

better off in the labor force. In a prominent example of this research, Kathryn Edin and Laura 

Lein showed that material well-being of single mothers does not increase when they are in the 

workforce, even when their income is higher (1997a, b; Edin 1991). Research by Beverly (2000, 

Forthcoming) provides additional evidence supporting the idea that hours of work directly 

1
 
decrease the well-being of single-mother families. This paper uses the 1991 and 1992 panels of 

the Survey of Income and Program Participation to examine welfare, work and well-being in a 

broader context. The paper examines how presence of children, marital partners, work and 

welfare use affect well-being, and how well-being, in turn, affects subsequent participation in 

labor market activities and welfare programs. 

Background. 

Most recent changes in welfare policy over the last decade have been premised on the 

idea that work is generally beneficial for those who use it as a means of support and welfare is 

generally not. These changes have subsequently led to a sharpened research focus on the validity 

of this premise. 

The benefits and drawbacks of work. 

Authors who have examined the contrast between work and welfare have often found 

ways that the former improves the lives of those involved. Employment does usually provide 

higher income than most types of welfare. Employment also potentially extends the range of a 

person's interpersonal network — and often includes people with higher status and resources. It 

usually expands the availability of credit and the type of housing available. The "intangibles" of 

work as a normatively acceptable life may be beneficial as well (Mead 1992; Wilson 1996; 

Wilson 1987). Finally, those who are employed may reasonably expect to have greater resources 

in the future, as better employment opportunities arise (Corcoran and Loeb 1999). 

The contrast between welfare and work does not favor work unequivocally, however. 

2
 
This is evident from recent research measuring costs and benefits of employment using new and 

different indicators of well-being. For example, child development indicators have shown that 

poverty, family structure and other factors interact to produce different outcomes in different 

situations (Clark 1983; Guo Brooks-Gunn and Harris 1996; McLanahan and Sandefur 1994). 

Work by Edin and Lein used indicators of material well-being to show how poor mothers use 

time, work, and resources from friends, relatives and others to balance a family budget (1997a, b; 

Edin 1991). Taken together, these studies have helped overturn the assumption that increased 

income and family well-being move together unproblematically when comparing families on 

welfare with families that work, and opened the door to understanding other mechanisms that are 

important to the healthy functioning of households and families. 

That single mothers in the workforce may have lower material well-being despite higher 

income is a potentially interesting finding. However, the evidence on this point is mixed. 

Research by Beverly (2000, Forthcoming) shows a negative relationship. Other research has 

found household well being to increase with labor force participation (Bauman 1998). 

Identifying how work is related to well-being requires taking a closer look at effects of 

employment, and examining how other indicators of well-being vary with work and income. 

The hidden costs of employment. 

If work decreases household hardship, it is because there are costs to working. In fact, 

much of welfare policy prior to the 1980s was aimed at understanding these costs and looking for 

ways to reduce barriers for those moving from welfare into work. The primary focus of these 

policy (and research) concerns was loss of welfare income and loss of benefits from other 

3
 
support programs such as medicare and food stamps. However, work has other costs, and these 

have been getting increasing attention. To begin with, there are direct financial costs of working 

— paying for child care, transportation and related expenses — that have not been adequately 

accounted for in current measures of poverty (Citro and Michael 1995; Short et al. 1998; Fisher 

1999). While it is possible to measure some of these costs, this subject remains controversial. 

Some authors argue that although they can sometimes be large, these expenses don’t usually 

represent a serious burden or disincentive to work for households (Mead 1992). 

Another cost experienced by working households might be the loss of time available to 

take care of household needs. Work takes up time otherwise available to produce other income 

or to reduce expenditures. For single parents, the time constraints involved in entering the labor 

force are especially severe. The presence of younger children, for example, significantly 

decreases work and increases welfare use among single women (Danziger et al. 1999; Harris 

1991, 1996). Households with more than one adult present may be able to reap the benefits of 

employment while suffering fewer costs. 

Finally, there is the possibility that working households experience less stability and 

predictability of living circumstances. Income is subject to fluctuation when working hours 

change, when daycare is unreliable, or when sickness or other problems arise. In some cases, 

program rules such as those forbidding collection of benefits while also earning income may 

create unpredicted fluctuations. 

It may be possible to clarify the roles of these different mechanisms by examining wellbeing among working and non-working households of different types. For example, if day-care 

costs are a major component of the unmeasured cost of working, then the presence of children in 

4
 
low-income households should help explain lower levels of well-being associated with work. 

Most other direct costs (commuting, uniforms, cost of prepared foods) would be shared 

approximately equally across different types of households. If time constraints were a key factor 

affecting well-being, then single-parent households might be expected to find their well-being 

more adversely affected by work than other types of households. 

Material hardship and household well-being. 

A number of indicators could be used to measure household well-being. For this paper, 

income (and poverty status, which is closely related to income) cannot serve as a measure, 

because income needs to serve as a control variable when comparing well being of working and 

non-working households. A common alternative has been to operationalize well-being in terms 

of long-term outcomes such as respondent’s career growth, children’s behavioral problems or 

children’s academic success. While these measures are ideal in certain respects, the linkages 

between these and current conditions of welfare use or employment have not been clearly 

established. There is some profit, therefore, in focusing on more immediate aspects of material 

well-being, which is the approach taken here. 

Recently there have been attempts to systematize knowledge about immediate material 

hardships, such as inability to pay bills or lack of material possessions (Mayer and Jencks 1989; 

Mayer 1995; Bauman 1998; Meyers, Weissman and Garfinkel 2000; Beverly Forthcoming). 

Measures of material hardship often include indicators of problems that are serious in their own 

right, such as insufficient food or failure to go to the doctor or dentist when needed. Other 

indicators included along with these, such as failure to pay utility bills, seem on their face to have 

5
 
greater association with behavioral choices than with simple material need. However, Bauman 

(1998) has shown that indicators typically used to measure material hardship are related to 

household economic and social conditions in nearly identical ways. This implies that they tap 

into a the same underlying set of processes, despite apparent differences. 

Material hardship is only weakly correlated with income and poverty (Beverly 2000). 

This is both a cause for optimism and for concern, in terms of this analysis. If income and 

material hardship were the same thing, then it would be impossible to find lower material wellbeing for working than for non-working families with similar incomes. On the other hand, a 

significant portion of households with substantial income report material hardship, which raises 

basic questions about what, in fact, is being measured by hardship. Although the answer is still 

far from complete, there may be two basic processes taking place. First, hardship may reflect 

attitudes or competence on the part of household members, as when relatively well-to-do 

households neglect to pay some of their bills. Second, hardship may reflect the impact of 

unforseen events, as with major automobile repair expenses.1 

By contrast to material hardship, there has been a long history of using other indicators 

such as housing and neighborhood conditions as a measure of well-being. Neighborhoods have 

been associated with a number of individual and household problems such as dropout, unwed 

childbearing and weak labor force attachment (Crane 1993; Wilson 1987; Massey and Denton 

1992; Rosenbaum and Popkin 1991). Neighborhood conditions would tend to be associated with 

longer-term economic status rather than immediate work or welfare reliance. Unlike 

neighborhood conditions, hardship has been shown to be a relatively short-lived condition, more 

linked to temporary income fluctuations than to long-term income (Cook et al. 1986; Mayer and 

6
 
Jencks 1989). 

Although neighborhood conditions and material hardship are not the same as poverty, 

households that are affected by them are plainly worse-off than those that are not.2

 Beyond this, 

neighborhood conditions and hardship might discourage employment. If material hardship were 

higher for working-poor households than for those on welfare, or if working-poor households 

were forced to live in less desirable neighborhoods, there would be a clear incentive to leave 

work or remain on welfare. The extent to which hardship or neighborhood conditions have an 

impact on employment and welfare use is unclear. Although previous work supports the idea 

that neighborhood conditions do affect work (Rosenbaum and Popkin 1991), there has been little 

or no research on the hardship-employment linkage.3 

Welfare use, work and well-being 

Comparing work with welfare requires consideration of how welfare is used. Static 

comparisons of those on welfare and those not on welfare contain many who would be in a 

different state at another point in time (Duncan 1984; Ellwood 1989). Those who “emerge” from 

welfare often re-enter the welfare system a short time later (Harris 1996). Past research using 

longitudinal surveys has classified welfare users into three or four groups (Duncan 1984; Bane 

and Ellwood 1986; Spalter-Roth et al. 1992). One group uses welfare temporarily, returning to 

employment or other means of support over the long term. A second group, of particular concern 

to those involved in fashioning policy, consists of those who remain on welfare for extended 

periods. Finally, there are two residual groups, those who move back and forth between welfare 

and work, and those who combine welfare and work simultaneously.4 Recent research on 

7
 
welfare and well-being has not distinguished these groups clearly. It is important to attempt these 

distinctions in relating welfare, work and well-being because of the differences to be expected in 

how they are related when welfare use is short-term, long-term or sporadic. 

People who use welfare differ in many ways from those who work. If there are 

differences in material well-being between welfare-using and working households, it is not 

immediately clear whether differences in the exigencies of work or differences between 

individuals are to blame. While working-poor and welfare-dependent households commonly 

trade places, it is clear from the previous discussion that only certain segments of the welfare 

population commonly move between welfare and work. In the end, therefore, it is not known 

whether differences in material well-being represent a barrier to work for most single parent 

families. 

As with material well-being, most factors that affect the path from welfare to employment 

aren’t easily categorized as characteristics of the path or of the individual. These factors include 

lack of job skills, transportation problems, perceptions of discrimination and depression 

(Danziger et al. 1999). It is unlikely that any of these operate independently of pre-welfare 

characteristics or of experience on welfare. Disentangling the cause-and-effect nature of these 

barriers opens up difficult empirical problems that may never be completely solved. 

It is important to establish the time ordering of events even if this does not show causality 

in an ultimate sense. While it would not be surprising to find that losing a job decreases material 

well-being, it is important to know whether declines in well-being lead to job instability — even 

if the linkage has more to do with respondent characteristics than to situational factors. 

8
 
Research questions 

The research presented in this paper attempts to set the experience of material well-being 

in a broader context than that shown in previous research. In so doing it addresses the following 

questions: 

C	 How are welfare reliance and work reliance associated with different types of households 

— single parent households, married parent households and non-parent households? 

C	 How does household well-being differ between households that rely on welfare and those 

that rely on work, with and without controls for income? 

C	 What types of welfare use are associated with the lowest levels of household well-being 

— long-term welfare use, one time use, or cycling on and off welfare? 

C	 What effect does household well-being have on subsequent labor force decisions and 

welfare use? 

The balance of this paper proceeds as follows: the next section discusses the data to be 

used to answer these questions. The following section examines patterns of welfare receipt and 

work. In the next section of the paper, these patterns become the basis for exploring the 

relationship between welfare, work and well-being among single parent households and other 

households. Subsequently, there is a test of whether the negative relationship between work and 

9
 
well-being becomes positive when control for income is added, and whether differences between 

single parent households and other households remain. The last empirical section focuses on the 

effects of material well-being on work and welfare transitions. This is done in two ways. First 

there is a global examination of the impact of material well-being on whether a transition was 

observed in the 12 to 18 months after well-being status was determined. Second, there is 

examination of a discrete-time hazard model for those at risk of welfare recidivism or 

terminating spells of work. Finally, there is a discussion of the implications of the findings made 

here. 

Data. 

The data for this study are from the 1991 and 1992 panels of the U.S. Census Bureau's 

Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). The regression analyses make use of the 

topical module on "Extended Measures of Well-being" administered in wave 6 of the 1991 panel 

and wave 3 of the 1992 panel. The topical module was administered to the reference person in 

each household (or his/her proxy), providing data on many conditions affecting the household — 

including housing quality, neighborhood conditions and material well-being. An identical 

questionnaire was administered in each panel. These panels overlapped so that both sets of 

questionnaires were in the field at the same time — winter of 1992-1993. There were 13,162 

households in the 1991 panel and 18,634 in the 1992 panel for a total of 31,796 cases for 

analysis. Households with no members under age 55 were excluded, so that analyses on work 

and welfare would not be colored by the choice of retirement. This brought the number of 

households being analyzed to 24,147. In many analyses, missing data on hardship measures 

10
 
reduced the sample further to 22,397. 

Respondents were asked about several types of conditions affecting their households. 

One set of questions dealt with neighborhood conditions. These included street noise, streets in 

need of repair, litter in the streets, rundown or abandoned buildings, industrial or other 

nonresidential uses, and smoke or fumes. Respondent were also asked if they would like to 

move because of these conditions. If two or more neighborhood problems were cited, the 

household was counted as having “neighborhood problems.” This was the case for around 24 

percent of the sample. 

Questions on material hardship asked in the 1991 and 1992 SIPP were very similar to 

those used by Mayer and Jencks in their analysis of poverty and material hardship in Chicago 

(Mayer and Jencks 1989). Household heads were asked, "During the past 12 months, has there 

been a time when your household did not meet its essential expenses? By essential expenses, I 

mean things like the mortgage or rent payment, utility bills, or important medical care." They 

were then asked about instances when the household did not pay the full amount of rent or 

mortgage, did not pay the full amount of utility bills, had telephone service cut off due to 

nonpayment. Next they were asked if someone had needed to go to the doctor or hospital but 

did not go, and if someone had needed to see a dentist but did not go. Finally, household heads 

were asked to categorize the food eaten in their household as "enough of the kinds of food we 

want," "enough but not always the kinds we want to eat," "sometimes not enough to eat," or 

"often not enough to eat." The latter two answers were taken to indicate hardship. A summary 

measure of hardship indicated households where at least two types of hardship were reported 

(around 14 percent of households). 

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Other questions in the SIPP dealt with household possessions, quality of housing, and 

crime. Although most of these were analyzed along with the measures just discussed, the results 

did not shed additional light on work, welfare and household well-being. For the sake of 

simplicity, they are not presented here. 

For this research, single parenthood was treated as a characteristic of a household. Any 

household that contained the unmarried parent of a child under age 18 during the interview 

period was considered a single parent household. All other households containing parents were 

considered married parent households. Households where no parents were identified were nonparent households. 

Receipt of several different program types was considered 'welfare' for the analysis of 

welfare, work and well-being. These included all means tested income support programs 

included on the survey: AFDC, SSI, general assistance and several less common programs. 

Analyses predicting welfare use focused narrowly on AFDC receipt, as use of this program is 

more responsive to external influences. Households that received money from one or more of 

these programs during a month were classified as on welfare. 

Work status was measured as a dichotomy at the household level. In order for a 

household to be considered not working in any month it had to have a non-working household 

reference person or contain at least one person between the ages of 25 and 64, inclusive, who did 

not work and was not married to the household reference person. Work could be either part-time 

or full-time. 

Because there was only one respondent per household, individual characteristics of all 

household members were not used in the construction of control variables. Instead, 

12
 
characteristics of the household itself (household income, home ownership) and characteristics of 

the household reference person (age, race, sex, education) were used. Health insurance status 

was recoded into three categories: complete coverage for all household members in all months, 

coverage for at least some household members in some months, or no coverage for any 

household member. Household income (in logarithmic form) was measured both with and 

without food stamps, with little difference in results. The analyses using the former version were 

included here. After some experimentation with others, two measures of asset holdings were 

included: tenure and number of asset types. The latter was measured by adding together the total 

number of types of asset income received (there were 12 types, including such things as money 

market accounts, US government securities, dividends, rental income). 

The SIPP is based on a multistage sample, rendering standard statistical tests 

inappropriate. In the tabulations presented below, standard errors are calculated using an 

adjustment for sampling based on the Taylor-series approximation, using the SAS software 

package. Statistical tests for regression models were adjusted to reflect a design effect of 1.4.5 

Working and non-working households. 

The most striking finding that emerged from the research cited above was that working 

mothers needed to bring in substantially more income to avoid experiencing hardship than did 

non-working mothers. To confirm these findings using the SIPP, a classification of households 

with respect to living arrangements, work and welfare is needed. There are two major 

complicating factors. First, the SIPP accounts for the living conditions of all households, not just 

poor single-mother households. Second, the SIPP follows households over time, capturing 

13
 
movements between welfare and work, and changing household living arrangements. 

To classify household living arrangements, the primary consideration was the degree to 

which households could be expected to be homogenous in terms of major expenditure patterns 

and time available for work and non-work activities. One major division was between 

households with and without children, since these entail different expenditure patterns and time 

expenditures (Betson 1990; Robinson and Godbey 1997). When there were children in a 

household, but no parent identified for the child, it was decided to count the household as one 

without children, thus the term “non-parent household” is used in most discussion below. A 

second major division was between single parent households and married parent households, 

since having a spouse present also makes a great difference in making time available (Robinson 

and Godbey 1997). Because households change their living arrangements over a year, and the 

SIPP keeps track of those changes, there was the necessity of deciding how to handle households 

who fell into two or three categories. After testing several variations, a household was classified 

as having a parent if an identified parent of a child in the household was present any month, and 

as a single parent household if a parent was not married in any month. 

A similar set of decisions needed to be made on classifications of welfare and work. 

Twelve months of income, labor force and household data presented a daunting number of 

combinations. Looking at patterns of welfare receipt over a year, the distinction is clearest 

between those with complete reliance on work and those with complete reliance on welfare. 

Those who combined work and welfare or who used welfare sporadically might be expected to 

be in-between those who worked and those who relied on welfare along most dimensions of 

interest here. However, their instability in work and welfare patterns may result from events that 

14
 
 

affect household well-being such as marriage, divorce, job change, job loss, changes in health, or 

movement of members into and out of the household. To allow for these types of effects it was 

necessary to break households into subgroups. Based on some exploration of the data, the 

following welfare patterns were chosen: (1) those who received welfare throughout the last year, 

(2) those moving from work (or non-reliance on welfare) to welfare reliance during the last year, 

(3) those moving from welfare to work or some other means of support in the last year, and (4) 

those who had a spell of welfare during the last year. For some analyses categories (1), (3) and 

(4) were combined. 

Table 1 shows the distribution of households across categories of work/welfare and 

parental status. The weighted total number of households in this data set is 72 million — which 

is less than that in other estimates, due to restrictions explained earlier. There were around 35 

million non-parent households, a smaller number of married-parent households and about ten 

million single parent households. Overall, around 85 percent of households relied exclusively on 

work, while over 10 percent received welfare. The remainder were not in the labor force for all 

or part of the year. Single parent households had much higher use of welfare than either of the 

other parental groups. The share that received welfare can be broken down further into the 

categories just described. Approximately 7 million households reported some receipt of welfare 

in the last year prior to interview. The largest portion of these received welfare over the course 

of the entire year. The balance were evenly divided between those who moved onto welfare, 

moved off welfare or experienced a spell. 

Unfortunately, this breakdown does not correspond exactly to the categorization from 

previous research mentioned above. Those who moved to or from welfare in the previous year 

15
 
contain a mixture of types — some are using welfare for temporary relief, some are cycling on 

and off welfare on a regular basis, and a few are at one end or another of a long welfare spell. 

Those who were on welfare the entire year were most likely long-term recipients, but contained 

some portion who were only receiving welfare for relatively short spell. To better capture 

information on those who “cycle” on and off welfare or combine welfare and work over a longer 

period, additional information on welfare use was taken from the recipiency history questions 

administered in the first two waves of the SIPP. All those who had a spell of welfare before the 

current year (or current spell if the spell extended beyond one year in the past) were classified as 

“previous recipients.” This category crosscut all the others, so that households dependent on 

work, dependent on welfare moving off or on welfare or combining welfare and work each could 

have had a prior spell. 

The last panel of table 1 shows those who had a welfare spell in years prior to last year, 

including those who received welfare in immediate past year and those who did not. Most of the 

households that received welfare before last year did not receive it in that year. An exception is 

single parent households, who were evenly divided. This may indicate that this group is one that 

is at continuing risk of being pushed onto welfare. 

Welfare, work, poverty and living conditions. 

Table 2 shows the percentage of households experiencing three types of material 

conditions and circumstances, broken down by parenthood status, labor force status and welfare 

use. Part A of the table takes up the first measure of material circumstances, poverty. Poverty 

was strongly related to welfare use, labor force status and parental status. Poverty was high 

16
 
 

among households that relied on welfare all of last year, did not contain an adult who worked or 

did contain a single parent — around 60 percent, 57 percent and 30 percent were poor, 

respectively. At the other extreme, there was a poverty rate of between 3 and 6 percent among 

non-working households, non-parent households and households that did not receive welfare. 

There were few notable differences in poverty across different patterns of welfare use, although 

those who had spells of welfare were somewhat less likely to be poor than other welfare users. In 

addition there are no immediately apparent interactions between welfare use and work or 

parenthood status. A formal test of interactions leads to the same conclusion.6 

Neighborhood problems (table 2B) followed a pattern very close to that observed with 

poverty status, although the differences across categories were not as pronounced. While married 

parent households had slightly higher levels of poverty than non-parent households, the nonparent households reported greater neighborhood problems. Non-parent households may have 

shown relatively high poverty rates due to the peculiarities of the current treatment of singleperson households in poverty equivalence scales (Betson 1996). Alternatively, households with 

children may live in better neighborhoods because they invest a greater share of their income 

toward obtaining housing in these neighborhoods. Among those who received welfare, there was 

some tendency for those who received welfare the entire year or who received welfare in 

previous years to report a greater number of neighborhood problems. A likely explanation is that 

both these situations are likely to reflect long-term economic conditions, which have a greater 

effect on the ability to locate in a favorable neighborhood. 

Poverty and neighborhood conditions were characterized by a gradient where those on 

welfare the entire year had the greatest problems, followed those with part-year patterns of 

17
 
welfare and, finally, those who did not receive welfare. This same gradient was not observed for 

the last measure of material circumstances, material hardship (table 2C). Households relying on 

welfare generally had high prevalence of material hardship. However, households that moved to 

welfare, and those with prior welfare receipt did not fall solidly between welfare reliant and 

work-reliant households. Poverty and neighborhood conditions were also characterized by a 

gradient where those who did not work in the last year had the greatest problems, followed those 

with part-year work, followed by those households with working adults the entire year. This 

gradient was also not observed in table 2C. Households in which adults worked part year 

experienced greater hardship than households in which no adults worked. As discussed earlier, 

greater material hardship in households with part year work and with recent moves onto welfare 

may be related to crises, unpredictable circumstances or instability affecting the household. 

In summary, two basic patterns of well-being were observed here. Poverty and 

neighborhood problems were least problematic for those who worked and didn’t rely on welfare, 

somewhat problematic for those who worked part year or had part-year welfare use, and most 

problematic for those who didn’t work and/or relied on welfare alone. Material hardship was 

least problematic for those who worked, but quite high among those with evidence of instability 

in their economic situation. Overall, parental status did not seem to make as much difference as 

economic behavior in household well-being, and most interactions were not significant. 

The next section presents regressions showing the relationships of welfare, work and 

single parenthood with material circumstances net of controls for many influences that are 

already known to influence well-being. While this does not isolate the effect of welfare and 

parenthood status as influences on material circumstances in any causative sense, it does help 

18
 
limit the range of explanations that might be offered for the patterns that appeared in table 2. 

Multiple regression analysis. 

Table 3 shows the results of logistic regression models of well-being measures on 

parental status, welfare status, work status and other variables. The columns labeled “A” show 

regressions with no additional controls. The columns labeled “B” add controls for income, 

health insurance coverage, age, race, education, and several other factors that might be expected 

to influence household hardship. The welfare-use categories used in tables 1 and 2 were 

collapsed somewhat in these regression models, based on trial and error. In addition, an indicator 

of current work or welfare status (at the time of the interview) was added to the model. This 

indicator is not designed to be exclusive, so a household could have positive codes for up to three 

welfare use indicators, with “moved onto welfare” and “welfare last year” defined to be mutually 

exclusive. 

Shown is a set of regressions with the main effects, along with the interaction between 

single parenthood and working. These interactions provide a direct test of the proposition that 

single parents who work face greater material difficulties than those who do not, once account is 

taken for their higher incomes. 

The regressions without controls (the models with the label “A”) in table 3 look a little 

different for each of the three dependent variables. The material hardship regression stands out 

because of the large coefficient associated with moving onto welfare in the past year. Poverty 

and neighborhood conditions, by contrast, were not significantly related to moving onto welfare. 

They were, however, significantly associated with other patterns of welfare receipt last year, 

19
 
while material hardship was not. This contrast reinforces the idea that changes in living 

circumstances have immediate connection with material hardship, but delayed relationships with 

other indicators. 

The neighborhood conditions regression stood out because of the small association with 

work in the previous year and with married parent status. Households in which an adult worked 

all 12 months didn’t rate their neighborhoods significantly better than those with lower work 

levels. Likewise, married households did not rate their neighborhoods any better than did nonparent households. 

A main point of interest in table 3 is the interaction between parental status and work. 

Single parent households that worked experienced much higher levels of material hardship than 

did working non-parent households, and both of these experienced greater hardship than married 

households that worked. These associations were not significant in the other two regressions 

(poverty and neighborhood conditions). The strong interaction of work and parental status shows 

that many of the “hidden costs” of work are associated with differences in household structure. 

Single parents who work must deal with hardship levels that are much higher than would be 

expected from the example of other working households. On the other hand, it seems work is not 

detrimental to single parent households relative to non-work in an absolute sense. The net effect 

of work is to reduce hardship for all three types of households in the regressions without control 

for income and background factors. 

The second point of interest is the strong impact of having received welfare prior to last 

year on all three dependent variables. These households were poorer, lived in worse 

neighborhoods and experienced greater hardship than other households, even after taking into 

20
 
account their current work and welfare status. It seems there was something about this group of 

households that made them vulnerable to short term and long term economic setbacks 

(neighborhood problems and material hardship), as well as medium term economic setbacks 

(poverty). This point will be discussed in greater detail below. 

The results of regressions with controls (labeled “B” in table 3) test whether the 

coefficients of work and welfare are affected by control for income, assets and other household 

characteristics. Once controls are introduced for material circumstances and other household 

characteristics, none of the indicators of work, welfare or parental status have any effect on 

neighborhood conditions. By contrast, many of these indicators retain a strong effect on material 

hardship. With controls, the coefficient of moving onto welfare falls just below the significance 

cutoff (the t statistic is 1.95), but is still quantitatively large. The association with single parent 

status falls somewhat. The interactions between parental status and work remain unchanged. 

The only variable that loses its explanatory power is work. The coefficient of full year work fell 

from being one of the largest to near zero, while part-year work became associated with 

increased material hardship. 

The control variables in these equations generally conformed to results found in previous 

research (Bauman 1998, 1999). Households with higher income had a much lower probability of 

experiencing difficulties — either because income decreases hardship or because low hardship 

facilitates income generation. Having members of a household covered by health insurance was 

also associated with lower hardship. Other control variables included age, education, gender, and 

race/ethnicity of the householder, and home ownership. Those factors generally associated with 

higher income were also associated with fewer problems with material circumstances. 

21
 
Overall, it can be said that, aside from its effect on income, work is associated with lower 

hardship and improved neighborhoods only among married-parent households. Working 

households enjoyed no better neighborhood conditions than non-working households. Single 

parent households that worked had marginally (and insignificantly) higher levels of hardship, 

non-parent households that worked had marginally (and insignificantly) lower levels of hardship 

than non-working households with the same parental status. 

A second major conclusion is that certain patterns of welfare receipt and work had a 

strong associated with hardship. Households that moved onto welfare seemed to have higher 

hardship (although the effect did not quite reach conventional levels of significance once income 

was controlled). Hardship was higher in households that received welfare prior to last year. 

Also, households that worked only part of the year had higher levels of hardship once income is 

controlled. 

The effect of hardship on subsequent labor force behavior. 

The evidence just presented clearly supports the proposition that working single parent 

households have greater material hardship than would be expected from the patterns observed 

among other types of households. However, it is not clear what consequences this has for the 

households involved. 

As stated earlier, material hardship might be a condition that reflects unmeasured costs of 

work or it might simply reflect characteristics of working households that live near the poverty 

line. However, the greatest concern is that single parent households are discouraged from work 

due to the types of hardships observed here. A first step is to examine whether households that 

22
 
experience hardship are affected in their subsequent participation in the workforce and the 

welfare system. If hardship is associated with later welfare use or detachment from the labor 

force, it is not necessarily because hardship plays a causal role. However it does tell us that a 

hardship is a marker of some process or influence that discourages work. 

Because of the panel nature of the SIPP, respondents who answered questions about their 

material conditions in the fall and winter of 1992-1993 continued to be interviewed up to 1 1⁄2 

years later. Table 4 shows a set of regressions of labor market behavior and welfare use observed 

subsequent to the determination of hardship status. The regression models include controls for 

nearly all the variables included in the long regressions of table 3. The idea was to try to isolate 

the effects that material hardship might have above and beyond the economic conditions that 

existed in the household at the time that hardship was recorded. In particular, measures of prior 

year welfare and work behavior were controlled, so the coefficients on other variables can be 

interpreted roughly as their influence on change in these behaviors. 

Looking across the first line of table 4, it can be seen that material hardship has an 

influence on most of the welfare and labor market transitions. Households that experienced 

hardship had a greater likelihood of leaving work and of moving onto welfare. These are the 

effects one would expect if hardship were involved in processes that discouraged work. The 

effect of hardship on beginning work is also significant, and it is positive in sign, indicating that 

households that experience hardship move into and out of jobs. 

By contrast to hardship, the effects of poverty are significant only in the regression of 

moving on and off welfare. As would be expected, poor households are more likely to move 

onto welfare and less likely to leave. Neighborhood problems have no significant impact on any 

23
 
of these transitions. 

The balance of the coefficients in the regression conform to expectations, generally 

speaking. Work transitions were affected by work in the last year, welfare transitions by welfare 

in the last year. Certain factors seemed to encourage work and discourage welfare use, including 

assets, home ownership and age. Other factors followed the pattern observed with hardship, 

encouraging transitions of all types except leaving welfare. These included single parent status, 

lack of health insurance and lack of education. It is interesting to note that these variables have 

elements that reflect instability of life situations (especially single parenthood, lack of health 

insurance), as well as elements that are more reflective of long-term household characteristics 

(education and single parenthood). 

As an extension to the analysis in table 4, an analysis was conducted to determine 

whether hardship has an especially strong impact on households who recently went off of welfare 

or recently began work. This involved the use of a discrete-time event history model.7 The 

coefficients were not measured with enough statistical accuracy to make conclusions about the 

relative magnitude of effects. However, it provided no support for the proposition that hardship 

has an especially large impact on people who are moving off welfare or onto work. 

The major finding of table 4 is the strong impact of material hardship on employment 

transitions experienced by adults. Hardship seems to be associated with patterns of living that 

make it difficult to establish a permanent footing in the world of work. For example, households 

that experience hardship may have been exposed to instability in their recent past, and continue 

to experience it as time moves on. 

24
 
Discussion and conclusion. 

This paper examined the relationship between work, welfare and material well-being to 

more closely examine the unmeasured costs of working in single-parent households. As with 

previous research, several types of households receiving welfare were identified. Single parent 

households were much more likely to have received welfare, and were especially likely to have 

been receiving welfare the entire year. They were also especially likely to have received welfare 

in the past, and to be currently receiving welfare conditional on past receipt. 

Poverty was greatest among those with the strongest attachment to the welfare system and 

among those with the weakest attachment to the labor force. Neighborhood problems followed 

much the same pattern. Material hardship, on the other hand, was greatest in households that 

were in-between. Households that worked part-year had higher levels of hardship than those that 

did not work at all. Households that moved onto welfare in the previous year had higher levels 

of hardship than those that received welfare the entire year. Interestingly, households that 

received welfare in prior years (before the last year) also had higher levels of hardship than 

others. 

The different behavior of material hardship as an indicator of household well-being was 

confirmed in regression models that added controls for income, parental status, marital status, 

age and other indicators of economic capacity. The effect on material hardship of having 

received welfare in previous years also stood out. 

Work was associated with lower levels of material hardship for married households, even 

when all controls were in place. Not so for single parent households; their hardship increased 

with work, though not significantly. However, the difference between single parent households 

and others was significant and quite large compared with other variables in the model. 

25
 
Material hardship also played a unique role in its effects on subsequent work and welfare 

use. As with poverty, material hardship was associated with transitions onto welfare in the 

months after hardship status was determined. However, hardship was associated with work 

transitions — both starting and ending work spells — while poverty was not. Neighborhood 

conditions had no significant effect on any of these transitions with the controls used here. 

Two things stand out from these findings. First, it was confirmed that single parent 

households show a negative association of work with well-being, at least compared with other 

households. Compared to households that don’t work, single parent households that work face 

significantly higher hardship levels than would be expected from the pattern observed among 

two-parent and non-parent households. This difference in the experience of hardship may be due 

to heterogeneity among households or it may be due to time constraints and other barriers to 

work. In either case, work does not mean the same thing for single-parent households as it does 

for most other Americans. 

The mechanism by which work creates hardship is unclear, but some insight is available 

from this research. If health insurance were the main issue, then control for insurance status 

would have greatly decreased the differentials in material hardship, which did not happen. If 

complying with program rules were the main issue, then there would have been a much larger 

impact of recent welfare receipt relative to receipt in prior years. If day care were the decisive 

factor, households without children would get the greatest benefit from work, not married parent 

households, as was observed. None of these tests is conclusive, but they do point to the 

possibility that there are other major forces at work. 

Second, material hardship showed itself to measure aspects of well-being not captured by 

more traditional measures. Aside from single parent households, the other group that stood out 

26
 
as being affected by material hardship was households with a history of receiving welfare in the 

past. Looking at this group can give better insight into the meaning of hardship. 

There are at least three reasons that households that received welfare in the past would be 

more likely to experience material hardship in the present. First, it may be that they have basic 

characteristics, including human capital, that makes it difficult for them to earn sufficient money 

or manage it well. However, the evidence in the SIPP data is that households with past welfare 

use have slightly better human capital characteristics than households that depended on welfare 

the immediate past year.8 

A second possibility is that welfare dependence creates behaviors and attitudes that make 

it more difficult for households to survive without welfare support. However, if welfare 

dependence were the issue, then households with steady welfare use over the immediate past year 

would have high levels of hardship. Instead, those with welfare use in years prior to the last year 

were the ones with high levels of hardship. 

The third possibility is that previous recipients have continuing difficulty managing their 

economic situations. Descriptions abound in both the academic literature and in popular 

accounts of working-poor families facing repeated setbacks as they try to keep job and family 

from falling apart under the weight of financial obligations and life’s catastrophes, small and 

large. This lends some plausibility to this explanation, though it would take additional work to 

substantiate. 

The idea of instability can be used as an explanation of nearly all the relationships with 

material hardship found in this research. Single parent households that support themselves 

through low-wage jobs may be stretching their resources and laying themselves open to various 

types of disruption. Instability may explain the effect of moving onto welfare on material 

27
 
hardship, as well as the higher material hardship of households that worked part-year. These 

households have experienced disruptive events: a loss of employment, divorce, or other change 

in household membership. Also, the idea of instability fits well with an explanation for the 

influence of hardship on subsequent welfare and work behavior — especially the observation that 

starting employment and ending employment are both positively related to past hardship. 

That hardship itself seems to contribute to future difficulty in leaving welfare or holding 

onto work points to the possibility of a self-reinforcing pattern. Instability creates hardship and 

hardship creates instability. However, it may be that instability and hardship are in some ways 

epiphenominal. That is, both may be signs of underlying difficulties that cannot be described 

simply in terms of hardship or instability. In either case there seems to be a group of low-income 

households — mostly single-parent households — that stay at the juncture between welfare and 

work, expose themselves to financial instability and hardship, and have a difficult time leaving 

this situation. 

The contrast between work-reliant and welfare-reliant households may be less important 

than the contrast between those who have adapted themselves to living with welfare and those 

who have, instead, developed other means of support that lift them partially or temporarily away 

from the welfare system. Although much of the policy focus of recent years has been on longterm welfare recipients, it may be that the group of “cyclers,” that enter the workforce only to fall 

back again, are the key group on which to focus if we are to achieve true success in welfare 

reform. 

28
 
NOTES
 

1. The impact of both these processes is evident among older adults, who report little 

hardship despite low incomes. (Bauman 1998) claims that older people have learned to protect 

themselves from budget problems by better planning and by establishing predictable living 

conditions (but see Mirowsky and Ross 1999). 

2. Recent work has shown that material hardship, like poverty, is predictive of outcomes 

usually viewed as negative — such as out-of-wedlock childbearing and high school dropout 

(Mayer 1997, Bauman 1998). 

3. However, factors that influence hardship (income instability, changes in household 

composition) also affect welfare use and work. Family instability has also been shown to 

contribute to school problems and other developmental problems in households where it occurs 

(Haveman et al. 1991, Wu and Martinson 1993, Tucker et al. 1998).

 Some findings from studies linking family instability with child outcomes might be 

partially explained by family hardship. For example, Tucker and colleagues found that instability 

of living arrangements had effects on children’s academic outcomes only in single parent 

families. What they might be observing is the much higher prevalence of unstable poor 

households with single parents (28.6 percent of households) compared with the prevalence of 

unstable poor households with married parents (5.3 percent). The former have much higher levels 

of hardship, as shown later in the paper. 

4. The division between wage reliant and welfare reliant single mothers, used by Edin and 

Lein in their research, captures a mixture of these groups — the greater part of “wage reliant” 

mothers had received welfare in the past, and the greater part of “welfare reliant” mothers had 

some degree of work experience (Edin and Lein 1997a). 

5. Standard errors were estimated using the Surveymeans procedure in SAS and the Wesvar 

software package. All tabular results were estimated with the Surveymeans procedure and initial 

regression models were estimated with jackknife standard errors. The average design effect for 

the regression results was found to be 1.4. Because this estimation method was cumbersome for 

testing large numbers of models, the balance of the regressions were done using the design effect 

to adjust standard regression output from SAS. 

6. I tested several models of the data in table 3, along with similar tables constructed for 

some of the other well-being indicators available with these data. Interactions between 

work/welfare status, previous welfare status and parenthood status of households were generally 

not significant. By standard fit criteria, some interactions were significant, but the improvements 

in fit were not impressive, given the large sample size available. Of the models with interactions, 

the interaction between work status and single parenthood always provided the best fit. 

7. The model used four-month periods as the unit of time to avoid the “seam bias” of using 

the SIPP for this type of analysis (for a similar approach see Blank and Ruggles 1996). 

29
 
Households were at risk of leaving work from the point that they entered work during the first 

year of observation. 

8. Of households with prior-year welfare use, 32 percent had less than a high school 

diploma. By contrast, of households that received welfare the entire year during the immediate 

past year, 48 percent had less than a high school diploma. The former group also had lower 

percentages of blacks and Hispanics (characteristics associated with lower earnings capacity). 

Strangely enough, the one exception to this pattern of greater human capital of prior-year welfare 

users had to do with female-headed households. Almost 80 percent of prior-year welfare using 

households were headed by women, compared to 65 percent of households who received welfare 

the immediate past year. 

30
 
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34
 
Table 1 

Patterns of Welfare and Work in Households, by Parental Status 

Household types 

Nonparent Married

 parent 

Single

 parent 

All

 households 

All households

 Total (000) 35,098 27,102 9,888 72,088 

 Worked 88.0 93.4 61.1 86.4 

 Welfare and work 3.9 4.6 18.8 6.2 

 Welfare only 2.7 1.1 16.9 4.1 

No work or welfare 5.4 0.9 3.1 3.4 

Households that received any welfare last year

 Total (000) 2,318 1,543 3,538 7,399 

 On welfare entire year 59.4 44.2 71.7 62.1 

Moved onto welfare 14.4 25.7 10.9 15.1 

Moved off welfare 16.0 19.1 11.6 14.6 

Had spell of welfare 10.2 11.1 5.8 8.3 

Households that received welfare in past years (before last year)

 Total (000) 452 535 1,802 2,790 

 Received welfare last year 32.2 27.0 49.5 42.4 

 No welfare last year 67.8 73.0 50.5 57.6 

35
 
Table 2A 

Household Poverty 

by Parental Status and Welfare Experience. 

Percent in poverty

 Parental Status Labor Force Status 

Nonparent Married 

Parent 

Single 

Parent 

Worked 

full year 

Worked 

part year 

Did not 

work TOTAL 

No welfare last year 

Welfare entire year 

Moved onto welfare 

Moved off welfare 

Had spell of welfare 

Received before last year 

TOTAL 

4.0 5.1 11.2 2.8 19.2 31.2 

(0.2) (0.3) (0.8) (0.1) (1.1) (1.5) 

39.0 51.3 73.9 14.5 57.4 82.8 

(2.0) (2.6) (1.6) (1.7) (2.7) (1.2) 

15.7 26.1 46.4 10.7 47.7 64.7 

(1.1) (2.6) (2.1) (1.9) (2.0) (3.3) 

9.7 15.3 40.5 9.8 39.3 48.2 

(2.0) (1.2) (2.8) (1.4) (2.7) (0.4) 

12.2 25.6 24.5 7.6 39.1 41.1 

(1.6) (3.2) (2.1) (0.3) (2.8) (5.3) 

20.1 20.9 47.4 13.9 59.2 79.2 

(2.3) (2.5) (2.1) (1.6) (2.2) (2.4) 

5.5 6.8 30.1 3.2 26.9 56.8 

(0.2) (0.3) (1.0) (0.1) (1.1) (1.2) 

(Standard errors in parentheses) 

5.1 

(0.2) 

60.2 

(1.4) 

30.4 

(2.1) 

23.2 

(1.9) 

20.2 

(1.6) 

38.1 

(1.8) 

9.4 

(0.2) 

36
 
Table 2B 

Neighborhood Problems 

by Parental Status and Welfare Experience. 

Percent experiencing neighborhood problems

 Parental Status Labor Force Status 

Nonparent Married 

Parent 

Single 

Parent 

Worked 

full year 

Worked 

part year 

Did not 

work TOTAL 

No welfare last year 

Welfare entire year 

Moved onto welfare 

Moved off welfare 

Had spell of welfare 

Received before last year 

TOTAL 

22.5 20.5 26.5 21.4 28.3 26.0 

(0.5) (0.5) (1.0) (0.4) (1.2) (1.6) 

34.6 31.5 43.9 30.0 37.8 44.1 

(2.0) (2.4) (1.7) (2.3) (2.6) (2.1) 

29.2 22.5 40.7 26.3 32.2 44.8 

(1.9) (2.1) (2.1) (2.4) (3.1) (0.4) 

29.1 28.7 34.6 29.0 37.2 25.0 

(2.1) (1.7) (2.3) (2.5) (2.7) (0.2) 

35.4 30.1 23.0 28.7 30.9 31.6 

(1.7) (3.1) (1.6) (2.3) (3.2) (0.6) 

21.7 35.9 40.6 34.3 37.7 41.8 

(1.7) (2.5) (2.2) (2.0) (2.1) (2.5) 

23.2 21.0 31.8 21.8 30.2 35.1 

(0.5) (0.5) (0.9) (0.4) (1.2) (1.3) 

(Standard errors in parentheses) 

22.1 

(0.3) 

39.3 

(1.5) 

30.8 

(2.2) 

31.1 

(2.4) 

29.6 

(2.0) 

36.8 

(1.8) 

23.5 

(0.3) 

37
 
Table 2C 

Material Hardship 

by Parental Status and Welfare Experience. 

Percent with material hardship

 Parental Status Labor Force Status 

Nonparent Married 

Parent 

Single 

Parent 

Worked 

full year 

Worked 

part year 

Did not 

work TOTAL 

No welfare last year 

Welfare entire year 

Moved onto welfare 

Moved off welfare 

Had spell of welfare 

Received before last year 

TOTAL 

9.9 13.4 23.0 10.9 27.1 22.9 

(0.3) (0.5) (1.0) (0.3) (1.3) (1.4) 

19.0 34.5 33.6 20.3 42.3 30.1 

(1.6) (2.3) (1.7) (1.6) (2.3) (1.7) 

21.7 35.9 44.1 27.6 40.7 48.3 

(2.4) (2.9) (2.6) (2.1) (3.3) (0.4) 

14.2 24.9 34.8 22.1 29.2 30.2 

(1.6) (1.8) (3.1) (2.4) (2.9) (0.2) 

20.8 27.7 36.4 24.5 33.7 33.3 

(0.2) (2.5) (3.7) (3.2) (3.0) (0.6) 

23.2 30.9 40.4 31.3 44.8 39.7 

(2.6) (3.3) (2.0) (2.1) (2.4) (2.5) 

10.5 14.5 27.3 11.5 30.0 27.2 

(0.3) (0.4) (0.8) (0.3) (1.1) (1.2) 

(Standard errors in parentheses) 

12.6 

(0.3) 

29.4 

(1.3) 

34.8 

(2.4) 

25.2 

(2.0) 

28.1 

(2.3) 

35.9 

(1.9) 

14.3 

(0.3) 

38
 
Table 3 

The Effect of Work, Welfare and Parental Status on Household 

Poverty, Neighborhood Conditions and Material Well-being 

Poverty Neighborhood 

Conditions 

Material Hardship 

A A B A B 

Currently receiving welfare 0.68 * 0.13 0.08 0.05 0.05 

(0.18) (0.14) (0.14) (0.15) (0.16) 

Moved onto welfare in last yr 0.33 0.11 -0.00 0.58 * 0.35 

(0.21) (0.16) (0.16) (0.17) (0.18) 

Welfare last year 0.78 * 0.29 * 0.12 0.20 -0.01 

(0.17) (0.13) (0.14) (0.15) (0.15) 

Welfare prior to last year 0.69 * 0.32 * 0.14 0.64 * 0.33 * 

(0.14) (0.10) (0.10) (0.10) (0.11) 

Currently working -0.15 -0.09 -0.07 0.02 -0.02 

(0.13) (0.12) (0.12) (0.12) (0.13) 

Worked 12 months -3.15 * -0.19 0.17 -0.96 * -0.22 

(0.18) (0.15) (0.16) (0.16) (0.18) 

Worked some months -1.06 * 0.08 0.20 0.09 0.33 * 

(0.14) (0.13) (0.13) (0.14) (0.15) 

Single parent household 1.46 * 0.36 * 0.12 0.37 * 0.21 

(0.17) (0.14) (0.16) (0.16) (0.18) 

Single parent * worked -0.03 -0.20 -0.22 0.57 * 0.40 * 

(0.21) (0.15) (0.16) (0.17) (0.18) 

Married parent household 0.65 * -0.01 -0.04 1.00 * 0.93 * 

(0.21) (0.21) (0.23) (0.21) (0.24) 

Married parent * worked 0.36 -0.09 -0.04 -0.53 * -0.48 * 

(0.24) (0.22) (0.22) (0.22) (0.23) 

Household income (log) -0.20 * -0.35 * 

(0.03) (0.04) 

Number asset types owned -0.07 * -0.42 * 

(0.02) (0.03) 

Rented living quarters 0.34 * 0.36 * 

(0.05) (0.06) 

Number of adults in hhld. 0.01 0.18 * 

(0.03) (0.04) 

39
 
Table 3 (Continued) 

Poverty Neighborhood Cond. Material Hardship 

A A B A B 

Number of children in hhld. 

All in hhld. have health insur. 

Some in hhld. health insur. 

Education of household head 

Male household head 

Black household head 

Hispanic household head 

Head age 15-24 

Head age 25-34 

Head age 35-44 

Head age 45-54 

SIPP panel 1992 

Intercept 

Null model likelihood (-2ll) 

Fitted model likelihood 

Degrees of freedom 

Number of observations 

0.01 0.20 * 

(0.03) (0.03) 

-0.06 -1.13 * 

(0.09) (0.10) 

-0.07 -0.55 * 

(0.08) (0.08) 

-0.04 * -0.05 * 

(0.01) (0.01) 

-0.12 * -0.19 * 

(0.05) (0.06) 

0.34 * 0.20 * 

(0.06) (0.07) 

0.14 * -0.21 * 

(0.07) (0.08) 

0.16 0.58 * 

(0.10) (0.13) 

0.23 * 0.60 * 

(0.08) (0.11) 

0.19 * 0.65 * 

(0.08) (0.11) 

0.09 0.42 * 

(0.08) (0.11) 

-0.02 0.04 0.04 0.06 0.06 

(0.07) (0.04) (0.04) (0.05) (0.05) 

-0.96 * -1.02 * 1.04 * -1.52 * 2.05 * 

(0.11) (0.10) (0.30) (0.11) (0.37) 

9180.5 16107.5 16107.5 12102.3 12102.3 

5709.0 15879.6 15484.2 11339.0 10246.7 

12 12 27 12 27 

22397 22397 22397 22397 22397 

(Standard errors in parentheses) 

40
 
Table 4 

The Effect of Poverty, Neighborhood Conditions and Material 

Well-being on Work and Welfare Transitions 

Begin 

work 

End 

work 

Move onto 

welfare 

Move off 

welfare 

Material hardship 0.30 * 0.32 * 0.45 * 

(0.13) (0.09) (0.17) 

Household poverty -0.08 0.06 0.56 * 

(0.16) (0.12) (0.20) 

Neighborhood problems 0.03 -0.03 0.07 

(0.14) (0.10) (0.19) 

Move onto welfare last yr -0.12 0.38 * 1.19 * 

(0.26) (0.18) (0.32) 

Other welfare last year -0.02 0.03 0.94 * 

(0.20) (0.14) (0.21) 

Welfare prior to last year -0.20 0.06 0.57 * 

(0.23) (0.16) (0.23) 

Worked 12 months -0.09 -1.02 * -0.29 

(0.16) (0.18) (0.39) 

Worked some months 0.23 0.32 -0.0004 

(0.16) (0.18) (0.40) 

Number of asset types -0.07 -0.08 * -0.23 * 

(0.05) (0.03) (0.11) 

Single parent household 0.37 0.45 * 1.99 * 

(0.21) (0.14) (0.26) 

Rented home -0.35 * 0.33 * 0.42 * 

(0.12) (0.08) (0.18) 

Subsidized housing -0.17 0.08 0.04 

(0.20) (0.15) (0.24) 

Married parent household 0.58 * 0.14 1.18 * 

(0.19) (0.12) (0.26) 

Number of children in hhld. -0.001 0.01 0.07 

(0.07) (0.05) (0.08) 

Number of adults in hhld. 0.21 * 0.11 * 0.31 * 

(0.08) (0.05) (0.09) 

0.07 

(0.19) 

-0.52 * 

(0.24) 

0.12 

(0.22) 

0.80 * 

(0.31) 

-0.09 

(0.32) 

0.16 

(0.24) 

-0.13 

(0.39) 

0.34 

(0.40) 

0.02 

(0.15) 

0.18 

(0.48) 

-0.24 

(0.24) 

-0.23 

(0.24) 

0.30 

(0.50) 

-0.03 

(0.08) 

0.15 

(0.12) 

41
 
Table 4 (Continued) 

Begin 

work 

End 

work 

Move onto 

welfare 

Move off 

welfare 

All hhld have health insurance 

Some in hhld have health ins. 

Work disability of hhld head 

Education of household head 

Male household head 

Hispanic household head 

Black household head 

Head age 15-24 

Head age 25-34 

Head age 35-44 

Head age 45-54 

SIPP panel 1992 

Intercept 

Null model likelihood 

Fitted model likelihood 

Degrees of freedom 

Number of observations 

-0.46 * -0.62 * 

(0.21) (0.14) 

-0.29 -0.22 * 

(0.16) (0.11) 

0.14 0.30 * 

(0.14) (0.09) 

-0.08 * -0.04 * 

(0.02) (0.01) 

0.19 0.18 * 

(0.12) (0.09) 

0.01 0.15 

(0.17) (0.11) 

-0.10 0.06 

(0.15) (0.10) 

-0.99 * 0.79 * 

(0.27) (0.19) 

-0.39 0.92 * 

(0.24) (0.16) 

-0.19 0.79 * 

(0.24) (0.15) 

-0.13 0.78 * 

(0.25) (0.15) 

0.18 0.29 * 

(0.11) (0.07) 

1.03 * -2.73 * 

(0.42) (0.31) 

2370.7 7185.7 

2184.6 6545.2 

27 27 

2561 23238 

-0.67 * 

(0.29) 

0.04 

(0.26) 

0.13 

(0.20) 

-0.10 * 

(0.03) 

-0.32 

(0.19) 

0.14 

(0.21) 

0.75 * 

(0.17) 

1.52 * 

(0.35) 

0.70 * 

(0.33) 

0.39 

(0.32) 

0.52 

(0.32) 

0.75 * 

(0.17) 

-6.00 * 

(0.67) 

2159.9 

1611.3 

27 

23504 

0.17 

(0.63) 

0.53 

(0.60) 

-0.40 

(0.23) 

-0.03 

(0.03) 

0.44 

(0.25) 

-0.48 

(0.26) 

-0.18 

(0.21) 

-0.09 

(0.47) 

-0.23 

(0.43) 

-0.18 

(0.42) 

0.02 

(0.42) 

0.44 * 

(0.20) 

-1.21 

(0.96) 

863.5 

758.0 

27 

1146 

42
 
 

July 18, 2000
 

POPULATION DIVISION WORKING PAPER SERIES
 

For copies of these working papers, please contact the
 

Statistical Information Staff, Population Division, Bureau of the
 

Census, Washington, DC 20233-8800 (301)457-2422/pop@census.gov
 

NO. 1 ­ "The Census Bureau Approach for Allocating 

International Migration to States, Counties, and 

Places: 1981-1991." David L. Word. October 1992. 

NO. 2 ­ "Geographic Coding of Administrative Records-­

Past Experience and Current Research." Douglas K. 

Sater. April 1993. 

NO. 3 ­ "Postcensal Population Estimates: States, Counties, 

and Places." John F. Long. August 1993. 

NO. 4 - "Evaluating the Passel-Word Spanish Surname List: 

1990 Decennial Census Post Enumeration Survey Results."

 R. Colby Perkins. August 1993. 

NO. 5 - "Evaluation of Postcensal County Estimates for the

 1980s." Sam T. Davis. March 1994. 

NO. 6 - "Metropolitan Growth and Expansion in the 1980s."

 Richard L. Forstall and James D. Fitzsimmons.

 April 1993. 

NO. 7 - "Geographic Coding of Administrative Records -- Current

 Research in ZIP/Sector-to-County Coding Process."

 Douglas K. Sater. June 1994. 

NO. 8 - "Illustrative Ranges of the Distribution of 

Undocumented Immigrants by State." Edward W. Fernandez 

and J. Gregory Robinson. October 1994. 

NO. 9 - "Estimates of Emigration of the Foreign-Born 

Population: 1980-l990." Bashir Ahmed and

 J. Gregory Robinson. December 1994. 

NO. 10 - "Estimation of the Annual Emigration of U.S. Born 

Persons by Using Foreign Censuses and Selected

 Administrative Data: Circa 1980."

 Edward W. Fernandez. January 1995. 

43
 
 

 

NO. ll - "Using Analytic Techniques to Evaluate the 1990 Census 

Coverage of Young Hispanics." Edward Fernandez. May 

1995. 

NO. 12 ­ "Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Areas: 

New Approaches to Geographical Definition." 

Donald C. Dahmann and James D. Fitzsimmons. 

October 1995. 

NO. 13 ­ "Building a Spanish Surname List for the 1990's-­

A New Approach to An Old Problem." 

David L. Word and R. Colby Perkins, Jr. 

February 1996. 

NO. 14 - "Fertility of American Men." 

Amara Bachu. March 1996. 

NO. 15 - "Comparisons of Selected Social and Economic 

Characteristics Between Asians, Hawaiians, Pacific 

Islanders, and American Indians (Including Alaskan 

Natives)." Edward W. Fernandez. June 1996. 

NO. 16 ­ "Findings on Questions on Race and Hispanic Origin 

Tested in the 1996 National Content Survey." 

Prepared in the Population Division by the Racial 

Statistics Branch and the Ethnic and Hispanic 

Statistics Branch. December 1996. 

NO. 17 ­ "Race and Ethnicity Classification Consistency Between 

the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health 

Statistics." Larry Sink. February 1997. 

NO. 18 - "Results of the 1996 Race and Ethnic Targeted Test." 

May 1997. 

NO. 19 - "Who Responds/Who Doesn’t? Analyzing Variation in Mail 

Response Rates During the 1990 Census." David L. Word. 

July 1997. 

No. 20 - "Trends in Marital Status of U.S. Women at First Birth:
 

1930 to 1994." Amara Bachu. March 1998.
 

No. 21 - "State Estimates of Organized Child Care Facilities."
 

Lynne Casper and Martin O’Connell. March 1998. 


No. 22 - "How Well Does the Current Population Survey Measure the 


Foreign-Born Population in the United States"
 

Dianne Schmidley and J. Gregory Robinson. April 1998 


44
 
No. 23 - "Poverty, Family Structure, and Child Well-Being:
 

Indicators from the SIPP." Jason Fields and Kristin
 

Smith. April 1998
 

No. 24 - "Child Well-Being Indicators from the SIPP." 


Kristin Smith, Loretta Bass, and Jason Fields.
 

April 1998
 

No. 25 - "Timing of First Births: 1930-34, 1990-94."
 

Amara Bachu. May 1998
 

No. 26 - "Co-Resident Grandparents and Grandchildren: Grandparent 


Maintained Families." Lynne Casper and Ken Bryson
 

May 1998
 

No. 27 - "Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban 


Places in the United States: 1790 to 1990." 


Campbell Gibson. June 1998
 

No. 28 - "Are There Differences in Voting Behavior Between 


Naturalized and Native-born Americans?"
 

Loretta E. Bass and Lynne M. Casper. March 1999.
 

No. 29 - "Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-born
 

Population of the United States: 1850-1990." 


Campbell J. Gibson. February 1999
 

No. 30 - "Direct Measures of Poverty as Indicators of Economic
 

Need: Evidence from the Survey of Income and Program
 

Participation." Kurt J. Bauman. November 1998
 

No. 31 - "American Community Survey and Intercensal Population
 

Estimates: Where Are the Cross-roads?"
 

Amy Symens. December 1998
 

No. 32 - "Women’s Labor Force Attachment Patterns and Maternity
 

Leave: A Review of the Literature."
 

Kristen Smith and Amara Bachu. January 1999 


No. 33 - "Evaluation of Relationship, Marital Status, and
 

Grandparents Items on the Census 2000 Dress Rehearsal"
 

Charles Clark and Jason Fields. April 1999.
 

No. 34 -	 "Unbinding the Ties: Edit Effects of Marital Status on 


Same Gender Couples." Charles Clark and Jason Fields. 


April 1999.
 

45
 
 

No. 35 ­ "Racial-Ethnic and Gender Differences in Returns to 

Cohabitation and Marriage: Evidence from the Current 

Population Survey." Philip N. Cohen. May 1999. 

No. 36 ­ "How Does POSSLQ Measure Up? Historical Estimates of 

Cohabitation." Lynne Casper, Philip N. Cohen, and 

Tavia Simmons. May 1999. 

No. 37 - "Childlessness Among American Women On the Rise?".
 

Amara Bachu. May 1999.
 

No. 38 - "Methodology and Assumptions for the Population 


Projections of the United States: 1999 to 2100" 


Frederick Hollman, Tammany Mulder, and
 

Jeffrey Kallan. October 1999.
 

No. 39 - "What Do We Know About the Undercount of Children?"
 

Kirsten K. West and J. Gregory Robinson. 


August 1999.
 

No. 40 - "Birth Expectations of Women: New Data from June 1998 


Current Population Survey." 


Amara Bachu and Kristen Smith. Release Pending
 

No. 41 - "Trends in Labor Force and Employment Characteristics of 


Married-Couple Families With or Without Children."
 

Amara Bachu. Release Pending
 

No. 42 - "Measures of Help Available to Households in Need: 


Their Relationship to Well-Being, Welfare, and Work." 


Kurt J. Bauman and Barbara A. Downs. May 2000
 

No. 43 - "Have We Reached the Top? Educational Attainment
 

Projections of the U.S. Population."
 

Jennifer Cheeseman Day and Kurt J. Bauman. May 2000
 

No. 44 - "The Emerging American Voter: An Examination of the 


Increase in the Black Vote in November 1998."


 Avalaura L. Gaither and Eric C. Newburger. June 2000
 

No. 45 -	 "An Analysis of State and County Population Changes by 


Characteristics: 1990-1999."


 Amy Symens Smith, Bashir Ahmed, and Larry Sink.


 Release Pending.
 

No. 46 - "The Effect of Work and Welfare on Living Conditions
 

in Single Parent Households." 


Kurt J. Bauman. August 2000
 

46
 
No. 47 - "Projections of the Number of Households and Families in
 

the United States: 1999 to 2025." 


Monique Oosse and Ching li Wang. Release Pending.
 

47