Sanctions and Education Outcomes for Children in TANF Families

Abstract

Most research on the impact of Welfare Reform has been upon the employment status of parents and trends in declining caseloads. Recent research has examined how children in Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program families are faring, with growing interest in the effects upon children of the disruptions to cash benefits that result from program sanctions, the policies that are intended to motivate parents to comply with work requirements. Adding to the body of knowledge on children and TANF sanctions, this study used administrative data to examine school attendance rates and disruptions to enrollment, for children from families with at least one sanction. Findings indicate that there are important probable connections between the factors that contribute to challenges to employment that relate to parenting and the school engagement of children in TANF families.

KEYWORDS:

• children
• education
• outcomes
• sanctions
• TANF

Notes

*χ² = 440.850(4), p < .001.

**χ² = 233.357(2), p < .001.

*F = 11.436(4), p < .001.

*F = 15.513(2), p < .001.

*F = 3.720(2), p < .01.

If no children in the household had IDs that matched numbers in the random number table, we moved through the random number table until we received a match to one of the children in the household.

Right-censoring, for example, occurs when the cases that were exposed to some event (sanctions) are excluded from analysis because any potential effects occur outside the observation period and are consequently, undetectable. The same challenge occurs with events occurring in the other direction (left-censoring).

Recall that this is a case-level statistic since there was one student selected per case/family.