The Relationship of Welfare Receipt to Child Outcomes.

Receipt of welfare is often negatively correlated with children's outcomes. However, because virtually all children who live in households that receive public assistance are poor, the question arises whether poor child outcomes are truly an effect of welfare, have only a spurious relationship to welfare receipt, or are a result of welfare selection factors. This study used data from children in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child Supplement who were 9 to 14 years of age in 1992, and controlled for poverty and for selection onto welfare. The findings indicated that: (1) controlling for child and maternal characteristics accounted for the majority of bivariate negative associations between welfare and cognitive ability and behavior problems among black children; (2) controlling for poverty did little to change the negative relationship between welfare and measures of academic achievement and behavior problems for either blacks or whites; and (3) controlling for selection onto welfare, through a two-stage selection model, reduces, but does not eliminate the negative relationship between welfare receipt and outcomes among white children and has little discernible effects among black children. (Ten tables detail statistical information. Contains 26 references.) (Author/KB)