| Abstract: | In this essay Peter H. Rossi describes the four major research projects assessing welfare reform, programs that account for more than half the spending in the area: the Survey of Program Dynamics (SPD), the National Survey of America's Families (NSAF), the Project on Devolution and Urban Change (UC), and the Child Impact Waiver experiments being funded by the federal government. He concludes that these studies cannot provide a reliable assessment of welfare reform's impact on children and families because it is too late to construct a valid control or comparison group with which to measure the "counterfactual," or what would have happened in the absence of welfare reform. |
