DOI: 10.3886/icpsr30282.v1
title: New Hope Project: Income and Employment Effects on Children and Families, 1994-2003 [Restricted Use]
title: Version 1

description: The New Hope Project gathered information on respondents over eight years using several data sources. This collection consists of three datasets: (1) Adults, (2) Child and Family Study (CFS) Parents, and (3) Youth. Information was collected on respondent's employment history, job characteristics and security, other sources of income, feelings about respondent's financial situation, material hardship, respondent's access to health care, as well as experiences with the New Hope program. Furthermore, families with at least one child between the ages of 1 and 10 at initial random assignment were selected for the Child and Family Study (CFS). The CFS independently surveyed parents/primary caregivers and up to two focal children when applicable, and collected information about the parents' and the child's well-being. Additionally, teachers of school-aged children were mailed surveys and asked to rate the child's performance and behavior. Demographic variables include age, gender, race, nationality, citizenship, educational attainment, employment status, income, marital status, parent-child relations, and household composition.
description: The New Hope Project was created to offer services and benefits to low-income households including job search assistance, a monthly earnings supplement, and subsidized child care and health insurance.
description: Over 1,300 individuals (Primary Sample Members - PSMs) were enrolled based on particular criteria and then randomly assigned to either (1) the New Hope program group; eligible to receive the program's benefits and services for three years, or (2) the control group; not eligible to receive program benefits and services.
description: Dataset 1 (All Adults) - approximately 9,800 variables; Dataset 2 (CFS Parents) - approximately 9,800 variables; Dataset 3 (Youth) - approximately 13,300 variables.
description: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes..
description: Presence of Common Scales: Woodcock-Johnson Achievement Battery: Letter-Word Identification, Passage Comprehension, Applied Problems, and Calculation scales; Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression Scale (CES-D); HOME measure; Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS); Social Skills Rating System (SSRS).
description: Response Rates: The overall response rate for the two-year survey was 80.0 percent for the full sample; 79.3 percent for the Child and Family Study (CFS). Of the CFS sample, 77.9 percent had at least some usable child data. Of the school-aged children (aged 5 years or older), 61.8 percent had at least some teacher data available. 75 percent of parents and 72 percent of children in the CFS provided at least some responses to the five-year surveys. Of all children who responded, 63 percent had at least one teacher who responded to the five-year teacher survey. The response rate for the eight-year survey was 80 percent.
description: Datasets: 
 
 DS0: Study-Level Files 
 DS1: All Adults 
 DS2: CFS Parents 
 DS3: Youth
description: cognitive assessment test, face-to-face interview, self-enumerated questionnaire, telephone interview 
This collection has been minimally processed by ICPSR due to the size of the datasets. ICPSR versions of Stata data and ready-to-go files have not been provided.
The data were originally produced by the University of Texas at Austin. The original collection of the quantitative data was administered by Westat and Survey Research Management; Ethnographic fieldwork: Thomas Weisner, Lucinda Bernheimer, Eli Lieber, Victor Espinosa, Christina Gibson, Eboni Howard, Katherine Magnuson, Jennifer Romich, Dvarti Syam. Special collaborators include Julie Kerksick, Tom Back, Sharon F. Schulz, Don Sykes; The State of Wisconsin; Milwaukee County; Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development; Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services; Wisconsin Department of Revenue; and the Milwaukee County Department of Human Services.
 For additional information on the New Hope Project, please refer to the MDRC New Hope Project Web site.
description: All adults over 18 years of age residing in one of the two target areas in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, whose household income was at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level and who were willing and able to work at least 30 hours per week. Smallest Geographic Unit: none
description: Please refer to the MDRC New Hope Project Web site for information on sampling.