Kids not affected as U.S. "welfare to work" rules force mothers to take jobs.

BETHESDA, MD -- U.S. preschoolers experienced no negative effects when their mothers were required to leave welfare and enter the labour force, according to a joint study by researchers at Northwestern University, John Hopkins University and Boston College. They reported a slightly positive impact on adolescents. The study was financed by the National Institutes of Health.

The study, which appeared in Science in early March, is the first analysis of extensive information collected by researchers about "how the transition from welfare to work affects women, their children and the surrounding community." The researchers also intend to track the children's development through early adulthood.

The project was initiated as a response to the 1996 U.S. Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act that instituted stricter work requirements for welfare recipients, tougher penalties for not complying with welfare regulations and a five-year limit on the maximum benefits received by recipients. It was primarily funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, the biomedical research arm of the U.S. government.

Conducting two separate interviews with more than 2400 low-income mothers and their children in 1999 and then in 2001, the researchers found that preschoolers aged two to four years of age were unaffected by whether their mothers went on welfare, left welfare or entered or left the workforce. They also conducted direct assessments of the children's reading and math skills along with questionnaires for adolescents pertaining to depression, anxiety, drug and alcohol use and delinquency.

"One argument is that the positive and negative aspects of going off welfare or getting a job may cancel each other out," said Dr. Chase-Lansdale, development psychology professor at Northwestern University, and the study's lead author. "Take for example, the trade off of time and money when mothers of preschoolers went to work. Family income increased and mothers' time with children decreased, so these two effects may have offset each other."

For adolescents, there were somewhat lower levels of anxiety when their mothers took a job as opposed to those whose mothers remained unemployed or out of the labour force. This held true whether the mother worked for one hour per week or for 40 hours per week and whether they were employed for a long or short period of time. "Out best guess is that when the mothers went to work, the teenagers' levels of anxiety went down," said Dr. Chase-Lansdale. "This is a reasonable explanation, when you consider how perceptive teens are to their environments."

The authors point out that the study occurred in the period of a booming economy and many employment opportunities. They will continue to look at the situation as the U.S. economy declines.

Other authors of the study were Brenda J. Lohman and Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal, IPR Research Fellows; Robert Moffitt, Andrew J. Cherlin and Jennifor Roff from Johns Hopkins University, Rebekah Levine Coley of Boston college and Laura D. Pittman from Northern Illinois University.

(To link with the original announcement go to commounityaction.ca.)