The De Jong Lecture in Social Demography

Was Welfare Reform a Success? How Minority Families are Faring

The 3rd annual De Jong Lecture was held October 3, 2008.

Dr. Andrew J. Cherlin reported on results from the "Three-City Study," a study of over 400 low-income families in Boston, Chicago, and San Antonio, most of them African-American or Hispanic, to assess their well-being in the post-welfare-reform era. At the start of the study in 1999, the families were receiving welfare; but all of them had left the welfare program by the end of the study in 2005. Dr. Cherlin traced their economic pathways during the six-year period and showed the difference that employment, race, and ethnicity made in their strategies to respond to welfare reform.

Discussants were Dr. Lisa Gennetian of the Brookings Institute and Dr. Paul Amato of Penn State.

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