This qualitative research seeks to improve our understanding of the relatively under-researched phenomenon of repeat teenage pregnancies, by exploring the underlying factors and meanings that teenagers ascribe to their pregnancies. The study uses a comparative approach to provide a comprehensive psychosocial and economic understanding of the factors leading to repeat teenage pregnancies. This is achieved by exploring both the diverse and similar experiences of two groups of teenagers within different socio-economic environments - one group of 26 respondents from the Caribbean islands of Jamaica and Barbados and the other group of 26 respondents from London. The research also capitalises on a unique opportunity to contextualize the welfare dependency/teenage pregnancy discourse. The behaviours, motivations, values and attitudes of young women who become repeatedly pregnant in a Welfare state such as England, are compared with those living in countries with limited state resources and few state benefits. The comparison shows that in the latter case, the lack of state intervention can have the disempowering impact of fostering dependency in many insidious forms. The findings demonstrate the very powerful influence that both intentional and hidden or masked factors can have on a young woman's decision to repeat a pregnancy. The intrinsic relationship between the personal driving forces of the young women and their repeated pregnancies is convincingly highlighted. These driving forces are accompanied by very strong and deep-rooted beliefs in the importance of motherhood and fertility, as well as anti-abortion views. When these factors are added to economic stringency, they provide the fuel for a young woman's journey into repeat pregnancies. The findings therefore caution against a reliance on a mechanistic understanding of both single and repeat teenage pregnancies and emphasise the fact that social, psychological, and emotional processes, as well as the economic influences, are also crucial to our understanding of repeat teenage pregnancies.

This quantitative study explored the impact of the Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program on welfare dependency over time, by evaluating participant income 5 years after completing the FSS program. The study was guided using the framework of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which initiated welfare reform in an effort to decrease dependency on government assistance; and the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act, the law that initiated Public housing reform by reducing the high concentration of poverty. The research question examined whether the FSS Program in Los Angeles County reduced dependency on welfare overtime. The sample size for this study included 256 participants who received housing assistance payments from the Los Angeles County Housing Authority between 2010 and 2019. The results of this study demonstrate that Los Angeles County FSS program graduates are indeed, self-sufficient over time, thus reducing dependency on welfare. Implications for positive social change imply that cities across the nation could experience a decrease in poverty while benefiting from increased tax revenue resulting from higher employment rates. Working adults tend to be less prone to crime if they are making decent wages that can provide for their family.

With the imposition of lifetime limitations on an individual's ability to receive cash assistance, there is a group of long-term Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients that have approached the lifetime limitation without becoming gainfully employed. Many long term TANF recipients report low levels of self-efficacy which inhibits their ability to successfully transition off welfare and into the workforce. However, most welfare-to-work programs do not address the emotional or psychological well-being of their clients, instead they focus on job placement and job readiness skills. The purpose of this sequential–exploratory mixed methods study is to identify the primary barriers to employment that have a negative effect on long term TANF recipient's self-efficacy. Albert Bandura's self-efficacy theory was the theoretical foundation for this study. Semi structured interviews with 20 long term TANF recipients helped answer the central research questions regarding barrier identification. The participants agreed that support for completing GED, as well as a more holistic approach to addressing their barriers is most effective in helping them transition off welfare and into the workforce. Hong's Employment Hope Scale (EHS-14) was used to collect the quantitative data for this study. The quantitative data were analyzed by multiple regression analysis and found that level of education has a statistically significant moderating effect on length of time on welfare and level of self-efficacy. This study may inform welfare-to-work providers and programmers on the importance of addressing TANF recipients' psychological needs, such as low self-efficacy before attempting to transition them into the workforce.