The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 eliminated the main United States welfare program, the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, and replaced it with another program providing welfare support in the form of block grants to states. Part of that law directed the Census Bureau to field a survey, whose purpose is to collect the data necessary to evaluate the impact of this change. The SPD will simultaneously describe the full range of state welfare programs along with social, economic, demographic and family changes that will help or limit the effectiveness of the reforms. The information obtained will be used to evaluate the impact of this law on a sample of previous welfare recipients and future recipients of assistance under new state programs funded under this law as well as assess the impact on other low-income families. The SPD is administered each Spring.
All files are linkable using match keys.
In addition, there are topical modules that vary by year. Researchers can obtain copies of Survey of Program Dynamics instruments here . The 1997 Bridge SDP, using a slightly modified CPS instrument, took approximately 35-45 minutes per household. The 1998-2002 SPD takes on average 1.2 hours per household. The length of the interview greatly depends on the number of family members, number of jobs, assets, program participation and the number of children within the household.