Readers may also find an indicator interesting and want to know more. For the indicators presented here, considerable analysis would be required to plumb the real meaning. The indicators presented in this report may well bring to mind other factors that should be tracked. Of course, we don't know. But the reader who wants to dig deeper can find broader and more detailed information in the large volume referred to at the outset of this report, Indicators of Welfare Dependence, Annual Report to Congress , October 1997.
Indicators also goes into considerable detail about additional data needs.
And it contains in-depth information about who is receiving what kinds of public assistance. At another level, state policy makers may want to create a counterpart set of easily understood indicators for their states. As the devolution of the welfare system to the state level progresses and states go in different directions, the type of information that is useful and relevant will differ. For example, a state that has managed to reduce violent teenage crime to a very low level may no longer find such crime to be an important indicator. A heavily agricultural state that is suffering, as did the dust bowl states of the 1930s, may find it more important to track the weather and crop yields.