OBJECTIVE To compare rates of avoidable mortality in adolescence in child welfare recipients and intercountry adoptees with the general population. DESIGN A register study of the entire national cohort of 989 871 Swedish residents born 1973-82 in the national census of 1990. Multivariate Cox analyses of proportional hazards were used to analyse avoidable deaths between 13 to 27 years of age d...

Reform has transformed traditional entitlement to cash welfare under Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) into a transitional program known as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF). Because of the new work requirements and the time-limited nature of assistance, policy makers are increasingly confronted with what to do when welfare recipients do not effectively make the transit...

A growing consensus is emerging that under PRWORA, more disadvantaged welfare recipients are failing to retain jobs and are not earning enough to rise above the poverty level, even when working fulltime. In this study, I draw primarily on the experiences of welfare recipients who participated in JTPA programs to address the central research question: What are the most cost-effective education a...

A spate of recent reports on President Clinton’s 1996 welfare reform initiative, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (“PRA”), indicates that the new welfare regime appears to be working. Although results vary by state, welfare rolls have dropped dramatically as many former recipients have gone to work. It remains to be seen whether the welfare population is bette...

Stigma is not the automatic outcome of power differentials, but a distinctive moral inscription generated through cultural evaluations and governmental processes. Research on welfare recipients records how unemployed displace stigma onto other recipients, positioning other(ed) claimants as ‘real unemployed’ or ‘scroungers’. Theoretically we adapt Butler’s analysis psychic processes whereby subj...

n recent years, single mothers on welfare have gone to work in unprecedented numbers. But with limited skills and work histories, they usually get low-paying jobs and remain in poverty. The situation is especially acute for the half of the caseload that does not graduate from high school. Since recipients with higher skills tend to get better jobs, it seems logical that education and training s...

policies and programs, even though children comprise a majority of public assistance recipients. In 1995, about twothirds of those receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children each month were children.1 Moreover, key provisions in the most recent welfare legislation, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), have implications for children. Based ...

As welfare-to-work programs proliferate in 50 states, the need to determine which are effective, which not, becomes more urgent, and the task more daunting. The first two articles in this issue of Focus explore two different approaches to the use of existing survey and administrative data to compare the effects of programs in different states, revealing both the possibilities and the limits of ...

Contrary to the popular view that the U.S. welfare system has been in a contractionary phase after the expansions of the welfare state in the 1960s, welfare spending resumed steady growth after a pause in the 1970s. However, although aggregate spending is higher than ever, there have been redistributions away from non-elderly and nondisabled families to families with older adults and to familie...

Australia, in line with other developed countries, has increasingly adopted a ‘participation’ framework for Welfare Reform. This approach to welfare reform is based on the idea that moving people from ‘welfare to work’ is best facilitated by policies that balance three main policy levers – assistance, incentives and requirements. Using research and evaluation findings from Europe, the USA, the ...