The project has received funding from The Annie E. Casey Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, The Commonwealth Fund, the Stuart Foundation, the Weingart Foundation, The Fund for New Jersey, The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, and The Rockefeller Foundation. The nonpartisan Urban Institute publishes studies, reports, and books on timely topics worthy of public consideration. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders. A number of economists and other researchers have lately sought to confirm this impression through scientific study of caseload levels and change, state to state and year to year. Authors for all nine of the studies examined agree that the strong economy played a role in the caseload decline of the 1990s, reducing the number of AFDC and TANF recipients roughly 5 percent for every 1 percentage-point reduction in the nation's unemployment rate.
Most analyses show policy making a difference, albeit a smaller one than economic change.
However, three of the nine studies conclude that the association between policy reform and caseload change in the 1990s is misleading. This conclusion follows from the fact that, starting at least by the mid-1980s, sluggish caseload adjustment is evident throughout the observational period. If persistence is not a factor, work-oriented policy reforms explain 15 to 35 percent of the drop in welfare dependence in recent years, with the economic expansion accounting for another 25 to 50 percent. The analysts who do not see policy playing a part in falling rolls attribute an even larger share of the decline to the economy, up to 80 percent. The other reform components typically addressed are family caps, enhanced earnings disregards, and tightened work exemptions.