Mothers of children with disabilities face a variety of problems compared to other mothers, but their experiences are not universal. This thesis provides a critical analysis of caregiving and disability by examining the experiences of a group of low-income African American mothers with children with disabilities. It explores the impacts of race, class, gender, and disability on mothers' experiences in the context of conflicting employment and caregiving demands for poor women. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with ten low-income African American mothers of children with disabilities, I illustrate how the struggles of raising a child with a disability are amplified in the face of race and class inequalities. As a result, these women redefine the notion of personal responsibility and employ a series of survival strategies.

During a time of national and local debate over welfare reform, research is needed to determine the effectiveness of specific welfare programs and the impact on the lives of households participating in these programs. The objective of this study was to determine the effect housing and food expenditures have on the diet quality of low-income families. Participants for the study were drawn from government-subsidized housing rolls and housing assistance waiting lists. Diet quality was measured by 16 variables: percent RDA protein, fiber, vitamin A, vitamin C, iron, and calcium consumed; percent calories from protein, carbohydrates, fat, and alcohol; and the number of servings from each food group: bread and cereal, fruit, vegetable, meat and protein, dairy, and fats and sweets food groups. Pearson's correlation coefficient was used to analyze the relationship between the percent poverty level of the household and the percent of income spent on housing and food with each diet quality variable. No statistically significant correlations were found. Mann-Whitney U tests and t tests were used to determine if diet quality of participants who received housing assistance was different from participants who did not receive assistance. No statistical significance was found. Participant's diets who received food assistance and diets of participants who do not receive food assistance were also analyzed to determine any differences in diet quality. Again, no statistical significance was found between the two groups. The diets of the sample population were found to be fairly average in comparison to overall food consumption patterns of the United States. Consumption of fiber, fruits, vegetables, and dairy products was low. Increased consumer education programs are recommended to improve overall diet.

Concerned with the question of why governments display varying degrees of success in implementing social reforms, (judged by their ability to arrive at coherent policy outcomes), my dissertation aims to identify the most important factors responsible for the stagnation of social benefits reform in Russia, as opposed to its successful implementation in Kazakhstan. Given their comparable Soviet political and economic characteristics in the immediate aftermath of Communism’s disintegration, why did the implementation of social benefits reform succeed in Kazakhstan, but largely fail in Russia? I argue that although several political and institutional factors did, to a certain degree, influence the course of social benefits reform in these two countries, their success or failure was ultimately determined by the capacity of key state actors to frame the problem and form an effective policy coalition that could further the reform agenda despite various political and institutional obstacles and socioeconomic challenges. In the case of Kazakhstan, the successful implementation of the social benefits reform was a result of a bold and skilful endeavour by Kazakhstani authorities, who used the existing conditions to justify the reform initiative and achieve the reform’s original objectives. By contrast, in Russia, the failure to effectively restructure the old Soviet social benefits system was rooted largely in the political instability of the Yeltsin era, and a lack of commitment to the reforms on the part of key political actors. And when the reform was finally launched, its ill-considered policies and the government’s failure to form the broad coalition and effectively frame the problem led to public protests and subsequent reform stagnation. Based on in-depth fieldwork conducted in Russia and Kazakhstan in 2006 and 2008, my study enriches the literature on the transformation of post-communist welfare regimes, and contributes important insights to the central question in the literature on public policy, that is, when, why and how policies change. It also enhances our understanding of political and public policy processes in transitional and competitive authoritarian contexts.

This dissertation contains two essays on the effect of welfare reform on child- birth, marriage, and divorce. In the first essay, I exploit the cross state variation in welfare reform implementation to identify its effect on birth rates. The results from multinomial logit models suggest that the welfare reform significantly increased the probability of marital births. The out-of-wedlock birth rates decreased but this effect is not significant. The strong work incentives decrease birth rates in both marital and non-marital statuses suggesting that bearing a child is not appealing for women who are more progressive in careers. However, the most aggressive welfare policy significantly increases marital birth as expected. Birth rates among teenage girls are not affected by the welfare reform. I further investigate the effect of the family cap policy. Using a semi-natural experiment, I compare the birth rate of women who already have had a second or higher order birth (treatment group) to women who have had one child (comparison group), in states with and without family caps. The difference in difference estimates reveal a strictly negative effect of family caps on the higher order birth rates as expected. In the second essay, I use reduced-form estimation and cross-state variation in timing of reform adoption to extract both mechanical and behavioral effects of welfare reform on marriage and divorce likelihood. I construct a flow measure of marriage and divorce by matching individuals in the Current Population Survey from March 1988B to 2002 and observing changes in marital status. I introduce a converse matching procedure to detect women who are not in the survey for two consecutive years. I find that the welfare reform has a significantly negative effect on marriage rates and an insignificant effect on divorce rates. The Difference-in-Difference estimates suggest that marriage among disadvantaged women is negatively affected by the welfare reform. I also provide a theoretical model to decompose the effect of welfare reform on marriage due to each of the components of the reform, i.e., time limits, work sanctions, earnings disregards, and maximum cash benefits. My results provide a novel explanation for the effects of work incentives and welfare restrictions on marriage.

Concerned with the question of why governments display varying degrees of success in implementing social reforms, (judged by their ability to arrive at coherent policy outcomes), my dissertation aims to identify the most important factors responsible for the stagnation of social benefits reform in Russia, as opposed to its successful implementation in Kazakhstan. Given their comparable Soviet political and economic characteristics in the immediate aftermath of Communism’s disintegration, why did the implementation of social benefits reform succeed in Kazakhstan, but largely fail in Russia? I argue that although several political and institutional factors did, to a certain degree, influence the course of social benefits reform in these two countries, their success or failure was ultimately determined by the capacity of key state actors to frame the problem and form an effective policy coalition that could further the reform agenda despite various political and institutional obstacles and socioeconomic challenges. In the case of Kazakhstan, the successful implementation of the social benefits reform was a result of a bold and skilful endeavour by Kazakhstani authorities, who used the existing conditions to justify the reform initiative and achieve the reform’s original objectives. By contrast, in Russia, the failure to effectively restructure the old Soviet social benefits system was rooted largely in the political instability of the Yeltsin era, and a lack of commitment to the reforms on the part of key political actors. And when the reform was finally launched, its ill-considered policies and the government’s failure to form the broad coalition and effectively frame the problem led to public protests and subsequent reform stagnation. Based on in-depth fieldwork conducted in Russia and Kazakhstan in 2006 and 2008, my study enriches the literature on the transformation of post-communist welfare regimes, and contributes important insights to the central question in the literature on public policy, that is, when, why and how policies change. It also enhances our understanding of political and public policy processes in transitional and competitive authoritarian contexts.

abstract: Welfare recipients must engage in a specified number of hours of work-based activities. Work-based activities include providing childcare for others, enrolling to obtain a GED, participating in job clubs, and working for pay. Welfare recipients may choose to get a GED or participate in job clubs to improve their chances of finding employment. As some states require participation in job clubs to receive welfare benefits, this study examined the likelihood of job club participation by low-income females in states where job club participation is optional, not mandatory. Using data from a sample of 3,642 low-income mothers participating in the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), I explored the relationship between educational attainment and the probability of attending job club or searches in the past month. Sociodemographic and state-level characteristics were used to control for other factors in logistic regression models. Results show that low-income women with higher educational attainment were more likely to attend a job club. Other significant factors were marital status, metropolitan residence, number of children, number of family members, and state poverty rate. Policy implications suggest that attendees already have the necessary skills to obtain a job and time limits and enrollment caps may hinder the changes of the targeted population. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Sociology 2011

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Policymakers, public administrators, the media, and others are celebrating the "success" of the latest version of welfare reform, codified into law in the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Most often, success is defined in terms of declining caseloads or in some other economic form - a practice that does not provide a true sense of the impact of policy changes such as welfare reform. Assessing the human impact of policy change requires more than the evaluation of economic outcomes; it requires knowing about the resources of beneficiaries of social services and their conditions of life from various perspectives. Thus, we have to strive for greater understanding about the socio-cultural aspects of people's lives that create the whole person, aspects such as health, family and friendship networks, housing situations, public and private support service and program use, conditions of work, and so forth (Erikson, 1993). This is how we come to understand one;s quality of life. The present research creates a conceptual model called quality of life, and illustrates the model using data from a follow-up study of former welfare recipients in a county in northern Virginia. Evaluation activities premised on a quality of life model will assist policy actors in understanding policy impacts and how to strategically manage public institutions within their very complex contexts, especially in an era of welfare reform. / Ph. D.