Levels of learning and school performance among children in and near poverty in the United States continue to be of national import at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The public, policy makers, and researchers agree that concerted efforts to improve the educational outcomes of children in low-income families are required to further develop their potential to become productive citizens. Concern is particularly warranted for the achievement levels of racial/ethnic minority children in poverty. National studies show that differences in family income account for over half of the differences among Black and White children in IQ scores. Black and Latino children are exposed to particularly high levels of economic disadvantage, as well as differential treatment in school and other settings.
Issues of race, poverty, income and school performance take on a special urgency due to rapidly changing federal, state and local policy climates for low-income families. Welfare reform policies, following passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-193), have produced profound changes in government incentives to move low -income parents off welfare and into work. The federal Children's Initiative has urged researchers to examine effects of variation in welfare reform policies on children (Office of Science and Technology Policy, 1997).
The current study examines how changes in income and employment might affect children's school performance differently for Black, Latino, and White families. The study aims to explore multiple mediating pathways through which changes in income and employment may affect children's school performance. The samples are drawn from 5 experimental welfare reform and anti-poverty policy programs, which have demonstrated short-term rises in income and employment, and which incorporate follow-up assessments of child school performance. The data will afford a rare opportunity to examine changes in income and employment which have been experimentally manipulated, rather than determined primarily by prior family selection factors.
The objectives of this study are threefold. First, it aims to answer the question: Do changes in income and employment in early childhood affect middle-childhood school performance differently for Black, Latino, and White single-parent families on welfare? Second, the study aims to explore differences among these groups in multiple mediating pathways through which effects of changes in income and employment on school performance may occur. Areas included are informed by psychosocial, lifespan, ecological, and human capital theories of child development, and encompass two principal microsystems, or proximal settings, of development (the home and child care settings). The mediators encompass child care use, including quantity and type; marriage; parenting practices, including authoritative parenting and cognitive stimulation; and parent aspirations for their children's school success. Differences in kind and strength of mediated relationships are hypothesized, depending on racial/ethnic group. Third, the question of how dimensions in current welfare and anti-poverty policy moderate these direct and mediated effects will be explored. Three primary dimensions across which current welfare reform programs differ are chosen for investigation: time limits, generosity of financial incentives (earnings disregards and supplements), and mandated employment-related activities.
The study utilizes data sets from programs which test approaches to encouraging employment and raising family income through anti-poverty and welfare reform policy. The programs differ considerably on the three policy dimensions, and reflect the current range of TANF programs. They cover a wide geographic range, including samples from four state policy contexts (Minnesota, California, Florida, and Connecticut). Moreover, the data sets incorporate subgroups of Black, Latino and White families of large enough size to enable comparisons of mediating pathways. The analyses proposed are distinct from the overall experimental impacts which have been and will be reported in the main evaluation reports for these programs. The study thus presents a unique opportunity to examine race/ethnicity-specific developmental effects of income and employment in the contexts of experimental designs, and variation in welfare and anti-poverty policy.
