Values of the Aid to Dependent Children Program

T1" HE aid to dependent children program has T now been in existence sufficiently long for us to begin to evaluate more adequately than has been attempted in the past the results of this extensive program for aid to children. We have largely contented ourselves up to this point with information limited primarily to the numbers participating in the program from year to year, the distribution of payments and the average payment, and individual and family characteristics of the current case load, facts which are readily adaptable to simple statistical treatment.' There has been no comprehensive effort to review the program in terms of what it has meant to the actual welfare of the tens of thousands of children who have participated in it and to their greater social usefulness. Such an over-all review of the program requires long-time surveys and a detailed analysis of results. The lack of available information on the positive accomplishments of public assistance has left unanswered many important questions. Frequently attention has been focused on the total cost of the program, on large individual grants, and on the exceptional cases which a program of this size will inevitably have. These questions need not have arisen, or certainly could have been answered more effectively, if there had been widely available information on the positive accomplishments of this category of public assistance. Actually the basic philosophy of the aid to dependent children program that children belong first of all in their own homes, have their greatest opportunity for happy wholesome development there, and should not have to be removed from such homes because of deprivation of parental support, has much empirical experience to support it. We know of individual cases in which a tremendous amount of help has been given to mothers and children, and we have a record of the accomplishments of those chi]dren in which persons associated with the administration of ADC as well as the families involved can indeed take pride. Fully to realize what the program has meant, however, necessitates a definite attempt to measure the actual results in terms of large samples of children rather than relying upon individual cases which happen to attract special attention. In order to analyze the situation in North Carolina, a study was undertaken in the fall of 1948 to find out what had happened to families which received aid to dependent children payments in October 1942. Findings from this survey are now available. Selection of the base month was prompted by the fact that considerable data were available from the State's participation in a survey conducted in 16 States for the Social Security Board as of October 1942. Thus valuable comparisons were available, and will be utilized in subsequent analyses. It is interesting to note that 9,383 families in North Carolina received ADC payments averaging $17.21 in October 1942 in comparison with 9,772 families receiving average payments of $38.67 in October 1948. The schedule for the North Carolina survey of October 1948 was designed to show the present characteristics of the payee and each child induded in the ADC payment received in October 1942 or in any subsequent aid to dependent children payments together with a review of individual and family progress in the intervening period.2 General purposes of the study were to find out whether or not the grants six years previously appeared to have been sound financial investments in terms of he present situations of the families and the current educational and employment status of the children who had been recipients of the payments. A random sample of one-fourth of the October 1942 case load was taken. All 100 counties in the State participated. It is believed that the sample is representative and that there is no appreciable bias in the results.3 A total of 918 usable schedules were received.