Welfare Reform and the Quality of Young Children's Home Environments

This study inves ti gates the effects of wel fare reform-a major pol icy shift in the United States that increased low-income moth ers' employ ment and reli ance on earn ings instead of cash assis tance-on the qual ity of the home envi ron ments moth ers pro vide for their pre school-age chil dren. Using empir i cal meth ods designed to iden tify plau si bly causal effects, we esti mate the effects of wel fare reform on val i dated sur vey and observational measures of maternal behaviors that support children's cognitive skills and emo tional adjust ment and the mate rial goods that par ents pur chase to stimu late their chil dren's skill devel op ment. The results sug gest that wel fare reform did not affect the amount of time and mate rial resources moth ers devoted to cog ni tively stimulating activities with their young children. However, it significantly decreased emotional support provision scores, by approximately 0.3-0.4 standard deviations. The effects appear to be stronger for mothers with lower human capital. The findings pro vide evi dence that wel fare reform came at a cost to chil dren in the form of lower qual ity par ent ing. They also under score the impor tance of con sid er ing qual ity, and not just quan tity, in assessing the effects of mater nal work-incentive pol i cies on par ent ing and children's home environments.