Welfare Reform and Migration of Poor Families

Project Abstract

Has devolution of welfare policy in the1996 welfare reform legislation created new state benefits and rules inequalities that engender inter-and intra-state migration of welfare poor families? Does welfare-driven migration result in increased after-move well-being compared with before the move for welfare poor families versus non-migrant families? This study uses merged data from four sources - the 1996 and 2001 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), the Urban Institute's Welfare Rules Database, and a local labor market characteristics file created from decennial census and Current Population Survey data - in a longitudinal, two-stage specification of welfare-benefit "push" and "pull" impacts on poor families' migration behavior. Based upon a state welfare policy inequality framework, we use factor analysis to develop measures from post-1996 textual policy manuals to operationalize 10 welfare benefit and eligibility rule dimensions and to test hypothesized state program effects on migration. We use discrete-time event history analysis to predict migration events (inter-state and intra-state migration) in the SIPP data. Our multi-level hierarchical modeling strategy is an integrated, and previously untested, micro-macro analysis of three determinant-of-migration hypotheses for welfare poor families.

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