DOI: 10.3886/icpsr38127.v1
title: Florida's Family Transition Program (FTP) Analysis Data, 1994-1999
title: Version 1

description: Florida's Family Transition Program (FTP), which operated until late 1999 in Escambia County (which includes the city of Pensacola), limited most families to 24 months of welfare receipt in any 60-month period (the least job-ready were limited to 36 months of receipt in any 72-month period). The program also provided an unusually rich array of services, supports, and financial work incentives designed to help welfare recipients prepare for, find, and keep jobs. Florida's current statewide welfare program includes similar time limits and financial work incentives, but differs from FTP in other key respects; thus, the evaluation is not assessing the state's current program. To assess what difference FTP made, the evaluation compared the experiences of two groups: the FTP group, whose members were subject to the program, and the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) group, whose members were subject to the prior welfare rules. To ensure that the groups would be comparable, welfare applicants and recipients (most of them single mothers) were assigned at random to one or the other group. Because the two groups had similar kinds of people, any differences that emerged between the groups during the study's follow-up period can reliably be attributed to FTP rather than to differences in personal characteristics or changes in the external environment. These differences are known as program impacts. The study focused on about 2,800 people who were assigned to the FTP and AFDC groups in 1994 and early 1995, tracking each person for at least four years after they entered the study. The FTP evaluation differs in one key respect from many earlier random assignment studies, in which individuals subject to a mandatory welfare-to-work program were compared to people in a "control group" that was not required to participate in employment services (but could do so voluntarily). In this case, many members of the AFDC group were subject to such mandates, in accordance with rules that existed before FTP began. Thus, the study is assessing what difference FTP made above and beyond the effects of Florida's pre-existing welfare-to work program.
description: The purpose of this study is to assess what difference the Family Transition Program (FTP) made above and beyond the effects of Florida's pre-existing welfare-to work program.
description: This study contains variables on participants' employment history, welfare payments and services, and demographic variables such as income, gender, ethnicity, and marital status.
description: Response Rates: 80 percent
description: The impact sample (sometimes called the 'report sample') consists of 2,815 heads of single parent households who were randomly assigned between May 20, 1994, and February 28, 1995. This is the sample contained in the file. 2,257 individuals were dropped from the sample because they were randomly assigned after 2/28/95. 356 individuals were dropped because they were heads of two parent households. In addition, 1 individual was dropped to due a duplicate case number, and another individual was dropped due to missing, and outlying earnings data. The impact sample includes 1,405 individuals in the program group (49.9 percent of the impact sample) and 1,410 individuals in the control group (50.1 percent of the impact sample). Family Transition Program (FTP) randomly assigned ongoing Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) recipients as well as first-time and returning applicants. Within the impact sample, 1,451 individuals (51.5 percent) were applicants and 1,364 (48.5 percent) were recipients.
description: Datasets: DS1: Florida's Family Transition Program (FTP) Analysis Data, 1994-1999
description: Welfare recipients and their focal children in the geographic coverage area.
description: face-to-face interview; telephone interviewThese data are a Fast Track Release and are distributed as they were received from the data depositor. The files have been zipped for release, but not checked or processed. Users should consult the investigator(s) if further information is needed.