Skip to main content

Just Released: Impacts of Welfare Reform on Recipients of Housing Assistance: Evidence From Indiana and Delaware

HUD.GOV HUDUser.gov
eList
HUDUSERNEWS
able> Welfare reform and housing assistance are integrally related: about 30 percent of families receiving welfare also receive federal housing assistance and almost half of all HUD-assisted families with children receive some income from welfare in any given year.

A new study from HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research titled "Impacts of Welfare Reform on Recipients of Housing Assistance: Evidence From Indiana and Delaware" explores the relationship between welfare reform efforts and housing assistance in two states.

"Impacts of Welfare Reform" improves our understanding of how welfare reform affects families that receive housing assistance by examining welfare reform programs in Indiana and Delaware using three primary methods: estimation of experimental impacts on subgroups defined by type of housing assistance at random assignment, descriptive comparisons of family characteristics by type of housing assistance, and non-experimental estimates of the effects of housing assistance on employment and welfare receipt.

Key research questions for the study include:
· What are the impacts of welfare reform on welfare recipients who receive federally funded housing assistance?
· Do welfare recipients who receive federally funded housing assistance differ from welfare recipients who do not receive housing assistance in characteristics that might create barriers to employment?
· How is the receipt of housing assistance related to subsequent employment and welfare receipt?

A sample of key findings includes:
· In both states, for all three categories of families with housing assistance (families living in public housing, using vouchers, and living in Section 8 projects), welfare reform had similar impacts: increasing earnings and employment and decreasing TANF and food stamp payments (although not all impacts were statistically significant).
· Families with housing assistance had consistently higher use of welfare and received higher food stamp payments compared to unassisted families.
· Among those welfare recipients who were exposed to welfare reform and who also received housing assistance at the beginning of the study, additional time living in public housing or using vouchers (since the beginning of the study) was associated with increases in employment and earnings and decreases in welfare receipt.

Overall, the evidence from this study suggests that welfare reform did not, for the most part, have substantially different impacts for welfare recipients with housing assistance in Indiana and Delaware compared to welfare recipients without housing assistance.

"Impacts of Welfare Reform on Recipients of Housing Assistance: Evidence From Indiana and Delaware" is available at https://www.huduser.gov/portal/publications/commdevl/welfare_reform.html.
Please contact HUD USER at:
HUD USER
P.O. Box 23268
Washington, DC 20026-3268
1-800-245-2691
1-800-927-7589 (TDD)
202-708-9981 (fax)
--------------------------------------
The HUD USER News listserv was created to keep professionals in the fields of housing and community development abreast of new research and resources available from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R). Periodically, publications and announcements will be sent via the listserv.

Share HUD USER's resources and information with a colleague. Please consider forwarding this e-mail to an associate who may be interested in the resources HUD USER has to offer. Thanks!

To stay abreast of new HUD research and resources, subscribe to HUD USER News. This listserv will automatically e-mail you publication announcements and other notices from HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research. To subscribe, send a message to: hudusernews@huduser.gov. In the subject of the message, type: subscribe. For example:
To: hudusernews@huduser.gov
Subject: subscribe

You will receive a confirmation message with instructions on how to post messages to the list, search the message archives, and how to unsubscribe. You may use your web browser to search the listserv message archives at https://www.huduser.gov/portal/elist/archive.html