This application requests the continuation of a study of the consequences for children's health and well-being of the changes brought about by the 1996 welfare reform legislation. Studies of children by this research team and others, although raising some concerns, have not found the severe declines in health and well-being that many feared. However, the investigators raise several reasons why the situation could change in the near future as the economic climate changes, more families reach welfare time limits, and more families attempt to be self-sufficient in the long run. They therefore argue that further study is needed. Support is requested for a third wave of interviews with a longitudinal sample of over 2,000 children and their caregivers in low-income neighborhoods in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio. In the first year of this project, the investigators propose to design, pretest, and field in fall, 2004, the third wave of interviews. The third wave will therefore commence five and one-half years after the first wave began in spring, 1999, and four years after the second wave began in fall, 2000. The fieldwork will end in the second year of the project. The investigators propose to process and code the data and to produce a unified public use file with all three waves of data by the end of the third year of the project in March 2006. They do not request funds for data analysis. The investigators propose to supplement the third wave with information from teachers about the children's school performance. Using a secure web-based survey, the homeroom teachers of the younger children and the English teachers of the adolescents will report on the socioemotional and academic adjustment of children and adolescents in the study. In conjunction with that activity, the investigators plan to add complementary questions to the wave 3 questionnaire. ? ? ?
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