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Show moreOne of the aims of welfare reform legislation signed into law in 1996 was to break the cycle of welfare dependency by imposing a limit on the amount of time a person may collect benefits. In addition to the five-year lifetime limit mandated by the federal legislation, Ohio's implementation of welfare reform included a provision limiting benefits to three-years in any given five-year period. In October 1997, the clock began ticking for those on welfare, and over four thousand individual Cuyahoga County welfare recipients who were still receiving benefits 36 months later, in October 2000, were removed from the rolls. Hundreds more left cash assistance in the months preceding the deadline, perhaps in anticipation of it, or to preserve personal safety nets for a later time of greater need.
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Show moreAt the request of the Cuyahoga County Department of Entitlement and Employment Services, the Center on Urban Poverty and Social Change undertook a study of the number and characteristics of families and children that would qualify for and use child care subsidies under welfare reform. Persons who receive Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) are required to participate in work activities for at least 30 hours per week in order to retain their cash assistance. Children of these recipients who are under the age of 13 are eligible for subsidized child care while their parents participate in mandated work activities. This Briefing Report examines the characteristics of a sample of the 1996 exit cohort to determine those factors that might affect use of a child care subsidy. The exit cohort chosen included all single parent adults over 18 who exited the welfare rolls in Cuyahoga County in any quarter of 1996. These adults had income from employment in the quarter following their departure from welfare and they had at least one child aged 3, 4, or 5 at the time of the exit.
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Show moreThis analysis of the retention of food stamps and Medicaid draws upon an ongoing, longitudinal study of families leaving cash assistance in Cuyahoga County. Each quarter, beginning in quarter 4, 1998, all families who leave cash assistance for at least 2 months are identified from agency records (this identification of quarterly exit cohorts will continue through quarter 4, 2000.) Each exit cohort is tracked for thirteen months. For this study, an exiter is defined as an assistance group whose OWF cash assistance case was open for at least 1 month and then closed for at least 2 consecutive months. The assistance group must have at least one adult over the age of 18 and all members of the assistance group must exit and not transfer to a new assistance group in the two-month period. The month of exit is the first month in which the assistance group does not receive an OWF check. Administrative records containing information on monthly welfare benefits (including case closing codes) and quarterly employment and earnings are compiled for all of the exiters for the year prior to and following the exit.
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Show moreOne of the aims of welfare reform legislation signed into law in 1996 was to break the cycle of welfare dependency by imposing a limit on the amount of time a person may collect benefits. In addition to the five-year lifetime limit mandated by the federal legislation, Ohio's implementation of welfare reform included a provision limiting benefits to three-years in any given five-year period. In October 1997, the clock began ticking for those on welfare, and over four thousand individual Cuyahoga County welfare recipients who were still receiving benefits 36 months later, in October 2000, were removed from the rolls. Hundreds more left cash assistance in the months preceding the deadline, perhaps in anticipation of it, or to preserve personal safety nets for a later time of greater need.
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Show moreMany adults who receive welfare leave the program for employment each year. However, many of these same individuals leave their jobs fairly quickly and, some of them, return to welfare as a result. These frequent job interruptions interfere with individuals' abilities to develop steady job histories and to provide income for their families. Therefore, in addition to moving recipients off of welfare, an important goal of welfare reform is to stabilize employment and earnings for these individuals and their families.
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Show moreThis special topics report examines the housing experiences of families leaving welfare. Specifically, the report examines their ability to pay for housing, the degree to which they experience housing problems and the conditions in the neighborhoods surrounding their homes. The report shows that the majority of families leaving welfare face housing hardships and relatively few receive housing assistance to help with their rent burden. Families leaving welfare also experience residential mobility rates that are well above the national average. However, their moves tend to be within a limited range of distressed neighborhoods that are distant from the locations of job growth and economic opportunity in the region. The heavy rent burden carried by former welfare families, their residential instability, and their concentration in poor neighborhoods has implications for housing and welfare policy.
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Show moreA key issue in implementing policies to promote the transition from welfare to work is the degree to which welfare recipients have adequate access to jobs. In Briefing Report 9905, we reported that at least 55 percent of welfare residents living in the City of Cleveland do not have access to an automobile. The availability of automobiles for welfare recipients living in the suburbs is somewhat higher (perhaps as high as 65 percent), but the percent without automobile access is still significant. For a variety of methodological reasons, we believe that these estimates are conservative and that the actual rate of access to automobile among AFDC recipients is lower. These methodological issues all introduce a conservative bias into the estimate: (1) poor mechanical reliability of some automobiles means that automobile access may be intermittent; (2) the lack of liability insurance means that some automobiles cannot be legally driven; (3) the lack of valid driver's licenses means that some adults cannot legally drive automobiles; (4) the presence of multiple adults in a household means that there is "competition" for use of the automobile; (5) the census data can only be used to determine who was an AFDC recipient during the year previous to the 1990 census (1989), thus, this population is not truly representative of the AFDC caseload at point in time. Three factors determine the degree of job access for welfare recipients. First, the mode of transport to work (i.e. private auto, public transit) is a key factor in measuring job accessibility. Second, the geographic distribution of skill appropriate jobs openings. Third, the commute time (by mode) from the homes of welfare recipients to potential work place locations. This Briefing Report summarizes several methods for computing these commute times in the Cleveland metropolitan area. For each method, advantages and disadvantages are discussed. Finally, consideration is given to how these methods can be generalized to produce estimates for other metropolitan areas. While several possible data sources exist, each has limitations.
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Show moreMany of the new provisions of Ohio Works First (OWF) went into effect in October, 1997 including the 36 month time limit on cash benefits and work participation requirements. All family cases (i.e. assistance groups) and the adult members of these cases in the October, 1997 caseload became subject to these new limits and requirements. Cuyahoga Work and Training Department requested that the Center on Urban Poverty and Social Change examine the patterns of welfare use for this caseload from the time welfare reform went into effect through June, 1998.
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Show moreIn Cuyahoga County, and across the nation, welfare caseloads fell steadily throughout the 1990s. Those who left welfare found employment in surprisingly high numbers. Many changes in federal, state, and local policy and program administration were implemented in the middle and late 1990s. However, this was also a period of strong economic growth resulting in historically low unemployment rates. Since the spring of 2001, the macro economy has faltered and the labor market in the Cleveland area, as elsewhere, has softened. How have changing economic conditions affected outcomes for welfare leavers in Cuyahoga County?
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Show moreA frequently mentioned issue in the welfare reform debate is whether there is spatial dislocation between the residential locations of welfare recipients and areas of job growth. Many have hypothesized that distances to suitable and sufficient employment opportunities, coupled with heavy reliance on public transit may pose a significant barrier to welfare recipients attempting to make the transition to full-time permanent employment. In previous Briefing Reports we have examined a number of aspects of this issue. In Briefing Report 9907, we found that welfare exiters living in the City of Cleveland do rely disproportionately on suburban employment. In Briefing Report 9908, we find some evidence consistent with the view that longer commutes lead to worsened labor market outcomes for those just leaving welfare for work. For individuals facing a difficult or impossible commute, a number of potential (if costly) solutions exist. One option is to change jobs to reduce commute length. A second option is to switch to a faster commute mode (for example, switching from public transit to private automobile if possible). A third option is to change residential locations. In this report, we investigate the extent to which individuals pursue this latter option as a means of possibly overcoming barriers to work. Of course, residential moves are both expensive, and dependent on finding new housing that is both affordable and provides reasonable access to work. As we have shown elsewhere, housing in the Cleveland area which is proximate to areas of high job growth (primarily suburban) is seldom affordable.1 Furthermore, African-Americans may face significant racial discrimination (implicit or explicit) in trying to move out of city neighborhoods to those that are more proximate to high job growth areas. Nevertheless, we believe that is important to examine the possible role of residential moves as background to understanding how those leaving welfare for work cope with spatial barriers.
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Show moreOne primary goal of welfare reform is to move welfare recipients from reliance on cash assistance to reliance on paychecks. In metropolitan areas around the country, this new set of policies will entail the entrance of a large number of individuals into the labor force. Many of these individuals have limited previous work experience, education and skill levels. A question central to the success of this endeavor is whether local labor markets have sufficient skill-appropriate job openings to absorb the new influx of workers. This issue is particularly pressing because of the nature in which welfare time limits are being implemented. On the date on which time limits are first binding, large numbers of individuals will be simultaneously eliminated from the welfare rolls. To facilitate the shift, policy makers may need to dramatically increase the scale of job search assistance, training, and possibly public employment provision. Local labor markets may exhibit either short or long-run unemployment. The discussion of welfare reform and labor markets is focussed at the local level because low-wage workers would not be expected to or have the means to conduct a state-wide or national job search. In order to assess the ability of local markets to absorb these new workers, estimates of the number of expected job openings are needed which can then be compared with the expected number of new labor market entrants. Because the labor market has an important spatial element to it – jobs must be located a reasonable commute distance from the workers who fill them – it is also important that these estimates incorporate a level of geographic detail. Furthermore, because former welfare recipients generally enter relatively low-skill jobs, these estimates must be specific to job skill level as well. In this Briefing Report, we discuss one such set of estimates constructed by the Poverty Center. These are estimates of the number of expected annual low-skill job openings by zip code for the 174 zip codes in the eight-county Cleveland-Akron metropolitan area. We provide an overview of the methodology used to construct these estimates, a summary of the findings and a supplemental appendix table showing all estimates at the zip code level for the area. In work published elsewhere, we use job openings like the ones discussed here to assess the ability of the labor market to adjust to the new conditions under welfare reform.
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Show moreThe Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 is the culmination of recent efforts to convert welfare from an entitlement program to a reciprocal obligation between government and recipient, in which the recipient must work in return for benefits. In addition to the federal legislation, many states are experimenting with similar and related reforms. All programs require that current welfare clients ultimately make the transition into the labor force. However, very little is known about the ability of the local labor market to fully absorb those who reach their welfare time limits. At the local level, policy makers will need to dramatically increase the scale of job search assistance, training, and possibly public employment. 1 As we move toward full implementation of welfare reform and the first welfare recipients reach their time limits, local labor markets may exhibit either short- or long-term unemployment. A spatial disconnect between inner-city welfare recipients who depend on public transportation and the increasing suburbanization of job opportunities may limit the labor market potential of some populations. Little comprehensive local labor market information is available to policy makers trying to assess local options and constraints. The Center on Urban Poverty and Social Change at Case Western Reserve University has developed extensive data relevant to these and other questions related to the implementation of welfare reform. This article describes efforts to develop a local labor market information system to assess the local labor market effects of welfare reform. The focus is on the Cleveland-Akron Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area (CMSA) as an example of how this information can be assembled and used for policy analysis and program planning and implementation at the local level.
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Show moreWelfare reform places a strong emphasis on employment and a major goal is moving recipients from the welfare rolls to the employment rolls. However, there is uncertainty as to whether recipients will be able to find work after leaving welfare and to earn enough income to support their families. The welfare caseload has been falling in Cuyahoga County since 1992 but little is known about how many people have been able to substitute earnings for their cash benefits when they left welfare.
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