Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 279-285). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

"We will attempt to show in this study that certain children in one County in Georgia are deprived of some economic support at a critical time during their high school education. Aid to Dependent Children, in Georgia as in many other states, terminates automatically when the child attains the age of 16 years. Presumably, this is two years preceding his graduation from high school. It will be shown on the basis of the information obtained that the withdrawal of ADC compelled many of these children to leave school and obtain work in order to contribute toward the family income"--Introduction. / Typescript. / "June 7, 1952." / "Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Social Work." / Advisor: Arnold Falk, Professor Directing Study. / Graduate study in social work. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 29-30).

Prior to the establishment of Aid to Dependent Children in 1935, states offered cash assistance to single mothers and their children through locally administered programs known as mothers' pensions. Since the first mothers' pension law was passed in 1911, the rank-ordering of states' generosity has been remarkably stable, shifting only after welfare reform in 1996. Prior research has neither documented nor explained this remarkable path dependence. In this dissertation, I argue that states' racial and ethnic composition and their state capacity, as measured in the 1930s before the federalization of cash assistance to single mothers, set states on particular trajectories. To see how this operated in practice, I conducted a case study of benefit levels in Massachusetts from 1913 to 1996. I found that a constellation of factors at the beginning of mothers' pensions--the lack of a legislated maximum benefit level, state involvement in funding, and a competent professional bureaucracy--set Massachusetts on a trajectory toward being a generous state. The early years of Aid of Dependent Children reinforced this trajectory, as benefit levels were consistently raised due to cost-of-living increases. Things began to change in the 1960s, however, as the caseload grew, the state experienced a fiscal crisis, and welfare rights activists campaigned for higher benefit levels. Welfare rights activism generated a backlash that resulted in a lack of public support for adequate benefit levels. Benefit levels declined until the early 1980s, when a strong economy, savvy advocates, and sympathetic elected officials combined to increase benefit levels. The early 1990s recession, which began in 1988 in Massachusetts, instigated another decrease in benefit levels. Ultimately, the case study showed that states may appear to have solid trajectories, but these trajectories are contested. Both raising and lowering benefit levels came up in the Massachusetts Legislature many times, and a fundamental change in Massachusetts' state capacity, such as permanently reduced fiscal resources, could have sent Massachusetts down a different path.

Thesis (Ph. D.) -- Virginia Commonwealth University, 2006. / Prepared for: School of Social Work. Date on t.p.: October 2006. Bibliography: leaves 113-134.

No description available.

No description available.

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This dissertation examines the nature of states' choice of AFDC benefit levels in order to determine the sources of interstate variations in AFDC benefits. Like previous studies, a state's financial and demographic characteristics are modeled as playing a significant role in the benefit choice. This study extends the literature by also formally modeling the role of the financial and demographic characteristics of a neighboring, or rival, state. The characteristics of another state are expected to influence the state's benefit choice for the following reason. Each state wishes to provide some minimum living standard for its citizens (the AFDC benefit level). The provision of this minimum living standard costs the state not only in terms of the dollar value of the offered benefit, but also in terms of increased total financial obligations if the chosen benefit level attracts recipients from the rival state. Each state, therefore, accounts for this "caseload" price of the benefit level by incorporating the level of interstate migration induced by any feasible benefit level, taking that of the rival as given, into its benefit decision. This interstate AFDC benefit-setting competition is modeled as a two state generalized game. The model's implication are derived and empirically testeµ. The results of the empirical tests support the game theoretic model; The observed pattern of interstate variations in the AFDC benefit level is consistent with the model's implications. The data further suggest that the degree of competitiveness, as indicated by the significance of the rival's characteristics in a state's benefit decision, varies inversely with the distance between the competing states. The model is then used to simulate the impact of the "New Federalism" proposal on the AFDC benefit level. These simulations indicate that, if enacted, the proposed "New Federalism" changes will significantly lower the average per recipient AFDC benefit level. The simulations also indicate that the greater the degree of competition between the states, the larger will be the magnitude of the decline in the benefit level. / Ph. D.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 140-149). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 140-149). Also available on the Internet.