A primary goal of transfer programs to the non-aged, non-disabled poor in the U.S. is to improve the well-being of children in poor families. In the past, most of the research which has been devoted to the study of these welfare programs focuses on the incentive effects of the programs for parents rather than on the question of whether the parents' participation in such programs measurably benefits children. Given the large amounts spent on these transfer programs, an assessment of the direct effects of parental participation on children is called for. This project will examine the relationship between a mother's participation in AFDC, the Food Stamp Program, and public housing, and various measures of her child's well-being. These measures will include the child's birth weight, growth, health, and psychological and cognitive test scores. The study will take advantage of the availability of a new data set which links a mother's welfare participation to these measures of her child's well-being: the National Longitudinal survey of Youth Merged Child-Mother File.
