Differences in State Welfare Policies Drive Poor Families' Interstate Moves
Press Release - July 8, 2003
University Park, PA-- Poor families move from state to state based on the stringency or generosity of each state's welfare policies, according to Penn State researchers.
"Ever since the Welfare Reform Act was passed in 1996 and welfare policies became more state-controlled, there has been renewed interest in whether poor families migrate from 'race to the bottom' states with less generous welfare policies to states with more generous welfare policies," says Dr. Gordon De Jong, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Demography.
"Our research provided the first systematic test of the question, and showed that poor families were more likely to migrate from states with more stringent welfare policies," he explains, "And they were drawn to states with greater change toward leniency in eligibility rules. States that were more lenient overall were the most attractive destinations."
De Jong, Dr. Deborah Roempke Graefe, a research associate of the Population Research Institute, and Tanja St. Pierre, graduate student in Sociology examined the stringency and leniency of eligibility requirements and behavior-related rules, as well as the generosity of state welfare dollar benefit levels to analyze the interstate migration behaviors of poor families. They recently presented their results at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America in Minneapolis.
States with stringent behavior-related rules, such as time limits, whether recipients work, or restrictions based on drug use, experienced less in-migration, De Jong found. Relatively lenient states making policy changes toward more stringent behavior-related rules also experienced reduced in-migration.
The attraction of state welfare policies depends partly on the state's economic well being, Graefe says. Where more stringent states offer higher incomes on average, the negative effect of increasing stringency is offset and the pull of increasing leniency is greater.
Welfare reform was long thought to specifically affect single mothers' migration decisions, but the researchers found that single mothers were less likely to move than poor families and single fathers.
"Because single mothers were more likely to have more school age children tying them to social networks that offer support such as assistance with transportation and child care, they were less likely to make the decision to move based on welfare policies and benefits," explains Graefe.
"Though family structure has a clear effect on the decision to migrate, once the decision is made, where poor families end up is not a function of family structure," De Jong concludes.
"Our destination and departure models support the conclusion that poor families have engaged in interstate migration as a response to many states instituting more stringent behavior related rules in the wake of welfare reform," he adds, and this effect is the same for differently structured families.
Previous studies of welfare motivated migration focus only on the size of the welfare check and fail to find firm support that welfare benefits encourage poor families to move. De Jong's results point out that the migration incentives of welfare policy go beyond benefit dollars and include issues of access and trade-offs between job opportunities and welfare eligibility.
In their study, the researchers merged data from three sources: the 1996 Panel of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), the Urban Institute's Welfare Rules Database, and state economic characteristics created from 1996-1999 Current Population Surveys.
--- **wdh**
EDITORS: Dr. De Jong is at (814) 863-2277 or e-mail dejong@pop.psu.edu
This press release courtesy of Penn State's Department of Public Information
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