ترتيبات المعيشة والتسرب المدرسي بين الأمهات القاصرات بعد إصلاح الرعاية الاجتماعية

Living Arrangements and School Dropout
Among Minor Mothers Following

Welfare Reform n
Heather Koball, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.
Objectives. The 1996 welfare reform laws required that parents under the age of 18
live with their parents or an adult relative and enroll in school to be eligible for
welfare benefits. This study examines whether minor mothers were less likely to
drop out of school and more likely to live with parents following welfare re-
form. Methods. Data from the National Education Longitudinal Survey 1988 and
the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 were used in difference-in-differ-
ence analyses. Results. Following welfare reform, minor mothers’ co-residence with
parents increased and their drop-out rates decreased. Conclusions. Welfare reform
requirements are associated with changes in living arrangements and drop-out rates
of minor mothers.
The 1996 welfare reform laws prohibited states from using federal money
for TANF payments to unmarried parents under the age of 18 unless they
lived with their parents or an adult relative1 and were enrolled in school. No
state provided TANF money for minor mothers who did not meet the
federal requirements, in effect ending TANF for unmarried minor mothers
who lived on their own or who dropped out of school.
Supporters believed the laws would encourage minor parents to remain in
their homes and in school, behaviors they maintained would result in better
outcomes for them (Bane, 1996). Furthermore, it was contended that the
minor-parent provisions, by taking away the means to set up an independent
household through welfare payments, would remove incentives for minors
to become parents (Grogger and Karoly, 2005). Opponents contended that
the laws would prevent the neediest minors—those who came from harmful
home environments or had dropped out of school—from receiving the help
they needed (Havemann, 1996).
n
Direct all correspondence to Heather Koball, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc., PO Box
2393, Princeton, NJ 08543-2393 hhkoball@mathematica-mpr.comi. I will share all data and
coding information with those wishing to replicate the study. I thank Greg Acs for his
valuable advice on pursuing this research topic. I also thank two anonymous reviewers for
their comments on earlier drafts.
1
Minor parents are allowed to live in other adult-supervised settings if the parental home is
deemed inappropriate; however, welfare reform provided no money to fund these alternative
living arrangements. In many states, minor mothers have not had access to any alternative
living arrangements (Duffy and Levin-Epstein, 2002).
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Living Arrangements and School Dropout After Welfare Reform 1375
At the time these requirements were passed, they were quite contentious.
They were implemented with little knowledge of what their effects would be
on minor parents. Before welfare reform, only a handful of evaluations had
been completed of demonstration programs that required school enrollment
for minor parents to receive welfare. The programs were varied, as were the
results: some programs showed improvement in school attendance and
graduation, while others did not (Duffy and Levin-Epstein, 2002). There
was even less information about the consequences of the living arrangement
requirements for minor parents.
Since the implementation of welfare reform, there have been only a
handful of studies of the effects of these new requirements on minor parents
(Kaiser Family Foundation, 2003). Most of these are limited to data from
individual states or to mothers involved in the welfare system. A study of
88 minor mothers in Michigan showed that most were familiar with the
new requirements for living arrangements and school enrollment and were
complying with them (Kalil and Danziger, 2000).
In contrast, a survey of minor mothers in three cities revealed that many
were ‘‘turned away’’ at the welfare office because they did not meet the living
arrangement and school enrollment requirements (Shapiro and Marcy,
2002). A survey of state data by the Center for Law and Social Policy
(CLASP) indicated that states were doing a poor job of tracking minor
parents (Duffy and Levin-Epstein, 2002). States were not able to provide
data on the living arrangements or school enrollment of minor parents in the
welfare system, so it was difficult to assess whether policies were having the
intended effects; however, minor parents were found to be sanctioned from
welfare at a much higher rate than were other parents.
Two studies have used national databases to examine the consequences of
welfare reform for teenagers. Kaestner, Korenman, and O’Neill (2003),
using a difference-in-difference (DD) analysis of the National Longitudinal
Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79) and the National Longitudinal Survey of
Youth 1997 (NLSY97), found evidence that female minors were less likely
to drop out of school in the late 1990s than they were in the early 1980s.
However, as the authors note in their conclusion, in the 15 years between
data points, changes in many other factors besides welfare reform could have
influenced these behaviors. In addition, this analysis focuses on the impact
of welfare reform on teenagers who are at risk of future welfare use, not just
those who became parents as minors, and therefore does not directly assess
the impact of the minor-parent provisions in welfare reform.
Offner (2003), using the Current Population Survey (CPS) and a DD
analysis, found no changes in the rates at which teens lived with their parents
between the early 1990s and the late 1990s; however, he includes in his
analysis teens who were 18 and 19 years old. Thus, these findings are not
directly applicable for understanding the impact of the minor-mother pro-
visions in welfare reform. His analysis showed that minor mothers were less
likely than other low-income females to drop out of school following welfare
1376 Social Science Quarterly
reform, which suggests that the new requirements for minor mothers had
the intended effects.
DD analysis relies on comparing outcomes for a target group (those who
are directly affected by the welfare provisions) and a comparison group
(similar teens not affected). Offner uses low-income teens as a comparison
group for the analysis, though, as the author notes, this may be problematic
for two reasons. First, welfare reform itself may have changed earnings levels,
thereby changing the composition of the low-income group over time. Sec-
ond, moving out of the parental home could cause teens to live in low-
income households only because their parents’ income is no longer counted
toward the adolescents’ household income,2 which compromises the com-
parison group if the rate of living apart from parents changed during this
period for reasons other than welfare reform.
The strength of these two national studies is that they measure the impact
of welfare reform on teenagers who have never been involved in the welfare
system. Welfare reform may indirectly affect minor mothers who never
apply for welfare because the requirements may deter them from even ap-
plying. Data from surveys of the teenage population, rather than from
surveys of welfare applicants or enrollees, can capture both the indirect and
the direct impact of welfare reform on the living arrangements and school
enrollment of minor mothers.
This study uses national survey data and a DD analysis to capture the
strength of this approach. It builds on the current research by focusing
specifically on minor mothers, which is important because only minor par-
ents were targeted by these welfare reform provisions. It includes several
alternate comparison groups to the low-income group: minor girls whose
parents have lower educational attainment, minors who have lower educa-
tional aspirations, and minors who have engaged in risky behaviors in the
recent past. These comparison groups improve on the comparison to low-
income teens because income is affected by welfare reform itself. Further-
more, using multiple comparison groups with a DD analysis tests the
sensitivity of the findings to the selection of particular comparison groups.
Data
The goal of the analysis is to examine whether welfare reform increased

the likelihood that minor mothers would live with their parents and de-
creased the likelihood that they would drop out of school. To do this, the
data must meet three criteria: (1) they must include enough minor mothers
in the sample for the analyses, (2) they must have been collected close in
time before and after welfare reform, and (3) background information for
2
The CPS includes no data about income of family members who live outside the surveyed
household.
the adolescent mothers must be contained in the data to identify multiple
comparison groups. To my knowledge, the National Education Longitu-
dinal Survey 1988 (NELS88) and the NLSY97 are the only publicly avail-
able data sets that meet all three criteria.
The CPS, which has been used in previous analyses of welfare effects on
living arrangements, surveys people of various ages; therefore, even though it
has a large overall sample, its sample of minor mothers is small. Little
background information is collected in the CPS, and unless a minor mother
lives with her parents, characteristics of her parents are unavailable. This is
problematic for constructing multiple comparison groups for the DD anal-
ysis, as described in detail below.
The prereform data come from the NELS88, a longitudinal study of
19,000 respondents who were in eighth grade in 1988. Follow-up data were
collected every other year. The post-welfare-reform data come from the
NLSY97, a longitudinal survey of 8,000 youths aged 12 to 21 in 1997.
Follow-up data are collected annually.
The second round of the NELS88, which was collected in 1990, and the
second round of the NLSY97, collected in 1998, are used in the analyses. The
1990 round of the NELS88 survey was used because it was collected prior to
implementation of state welfare waivers3 and of welfare reform nationally.
The 1998 survey of the NLSY97 was used because it was collected soon after
welfare reform was passed, but late enough that states had had a chance to
implement the welfare requirements fully. All 50 states had implemented the
minor-parent provisions by July 1997, but most had implemented them by
the end of 1996. The NELS88 freshened its sample in 1990 to account for
dropouts. The NLSY97 had a drop-out rate of 6 percent between surveys.
Survey Differences
Both the NELS88 and the NLSY97 were created and administered by the
National Opinion Research Corporation. This contributes to the consistency
in data quality, response rates, and question wording across the two surveys.
There were some differences in sampling between the surveys. In particular,
the NELS88, a school-based sample, did not include respondents who
dropped out of school before the eighth grade. The NLSY97, a home-based
sample, did include people who dropped out before eighth grade. Thus, for
the analysis, such respondents were also excluded from the NLSY97 sample.
Schools could refuse to participate in the NELS88 survey. Differential
response rates were observed for public versus private schools. To account
for this, weights were used to calculate the frequencies, and school type was
controlled in the regression analyses. For those who dropped out of school,
their most recent school type was used in the analysis.
3
Some states implemented the school enrollment and living arrangement requirements for
minor mothers in the early 1990s through state waivers.
The age distribution of the respondents differed across the two surveys.
The base for the NELS88 sample was respondents in the eighth grade in
1988, which meant that most NELS88 respondents were between 15 and 17
in the 1990 round of the data. So that the age ranges were consistent, only
respondents who were between 15 and 17 in the 1998 NLSY97 data were
included in the analyses. Furthermore, most NELS88 respondents were 15
or 16, while the NLSY97 respondents were equally likely to be 15, 16, or
17. Thus, age was controlled in all the regression analyses.
Anyone who did not respond to all the data items necessary for the
analysis was dropped from the sample;4 about 5 percent of the total was
excluded for this reason. Only minor mothers who lived with their children
were included in the analysis; therefore, a handful who lived apart from their
children were excluded. All analyses are restricted to female minors. The
final sample included 172 minor mothers in 1990 and 96 in 1998, and
8,792 female minors who were not mothers in 1990 and 2,284 in 1998.
These small samples of minor mothers decrease the power of the statistical
tests in the analysis, which is discussed further in the conclusion.
Both surveys oversampled minorities, so all frequencies were weighted to
account for differential sampling rates. Based on the advice of the survey
technical manual (U.S. Department of Labor, 2002), weights were not used
in the regression analysis, and race was controlled to account for differential
sampling rates.
All data come from the respondents’ reports to the surveys. The outcome
variable living with parents is defined as living with one’s biological/adoptive
mother and/or one’s biological/adoptive father at the time of the survey.
Dropping out of school is defined as not currently being enrolled in school
and not having graduated from high school or received a GED.
Analysis
Changes between surveys in the demographic characteristics of the re-

spondents were examined. The parents of minor mothers were more likely
to have less education in 1998 compared with 1990, while other minor
females had parents with slightly more education (see Table 1). Both minor
mothers and other minor females were less likely to go to public school in
1998; however, enrollment of minor mothers in public school dropped
more substantially than did enrollment of nonminor mothers. Both minor
mothers and other minor females were less likely to speak English as a
second language in 1998, though this difference was significant only for
nonmothers. The 1998 respondents were older than the 1990 respondents,
which reflects the differences in sampling procedures between the surveys.
Minor mothers were more likely to be non-African-American and non-
4
If the information was not available from the earlier survey round, it was imputed.
TABLE 1
Characteristics of Minor Mothers and Female Minors, Aged 15–17, Weighted:
1990 Round NELS88 and 1998 Round of NLSY97
Minor Mothers Not Minor Mothers
1990 1998 1990 1998

(N 5 172) (N 5 96) (N 5 8,792) (N 5 2,284)
Parents’ education
Less than HS 25 27 13 10 n
High school 34 51 n 30 31
More than HS 42 22 n 57 59 n
Public school 99 83 n 91 89 n
English second language 24 13 17 12 n
Age
15 21 6n 47 33 n
16 45 33 46 33 n
17 34 61 n 7 34 n
Race/ethnicity
African American 53 39 13 15 n
Hispanic 14 15 10 11
Not H or A A 33 46 n 77 74 n
Region
Northeast 16 16 19 18
North central 14 21 26 26
South 57 51 35 35
West 13 12 19 21 n
Rural area 24 29 31 32
Lives with parent 59 79 n 96 95
Dropped out 62 40 n 4 6
n
po0.05.
Latino in 1998 than in 1990. Minor mothers in 1998 also experienced a

greater decline than nonmothers in southern residence; however, this decline
was not significant. These characteristics were controlled in subsequent re-
gression analyses to control for effects of compositional changes on the
outcomes. A large decline in drop-out rates was found, as was a large in-
crease in living with parents among minor mothers; these findings were not
explained by the changes in the age structure of the samples, which suggests
that welfare reform requirements had their intended effects.
Difference-in-Difference Analysis
A DD analysis was used to examine whether drop-out rates decreased and

living with parents increased among minor mothers following welfare re-
form. Such an analysis tests whether minor mothers experienced a greater
increase (or decrease) than did a comparison group in living with parents (or
in drop-out rates) between 1990 and 1998. DD is a standard analytical
approach used to study the effects of welfare policies (e.g., Acs and Nelson,
2004).
Specifically, I estimate the following equation with data pooled from the
two surveys.
Outcomei ¼ b0 þ b1 Mi þ b2 Tt þ b3 Mi Tt þ bj Xi
In the first model, Outcome indicates whether the female minor dropped
out of school. In the second model, Outcome indicates whether the female
minor lives with her parents.
Mi equals 1 if the respondent is a minor mother.
Tt equals 1 if the data are from the NLSY97 data, 1998 round.
Xi is a vector of characteristics of the respondents, in particular, those
characteristics of minors that were shown to differ significantly between
1990 and 1998.
The two-way interaction term (b3) is the coefficient of interest. This
coefficient tests whether minor mothers in 1998 experienced a greater in-
crease (or decrease) in living with their parents (or dropping out of school)
since 1990, relative to the comparison group. Models are estimated using
linear probability models, similar to previous work using DD analysis (e.g.,
Acs and Nelson, 2004). Though the outcome is a dichotomous variable, a
logit analysis is not appropriate for DD analysis because the estimated in-
teraction terms do not necessarily represent in sign or significance the impact
of the policy on the outcome (see Ai and Norton, 2003 for a discussion of
the issue).
In a DD analysis, the comparison group should be unaffected by welfare
reform, but similar to the group of interest (minor mothers). Choosing a
comparison group that is similar to minor mothers controls for the impact
of social or economic changes, other than welfare reform, that could affect
the outcomes. For example, if housing costs increase, minor mothers, who
tend to be low income, might no longer be able to afford to live indepen-
dently of their parents. Yet housing costs might have no effect on the living
arrangements of higher-income minors. If higher-income minors are in-
cluded in the comparison group, the DD interaction term may be signifi-
cant, even though housing costs, not welfare reform, are driving the change
in living arrangements.
Three analyses were performed using comparison groups of minor females
who were similar to minor mothers but did not have a child, and thus were
unlikely to be affected by the minor-parent welfare provisions. The first
comparison group included those whose more-educated parent5 did not
5
Information about parent(s) education levels was included in the data, regardless of
whether the minor lived with her parents.
attend any college. Parental education levels are highly predictive of income:
67 percent of families headed by parents without a college education are low
income, with incomes less than 200 percent of the poverty level, compared
with 23 percent of families headed by a parent with at least some college
education (Koball and Douglas-Hall, 2003). Parental education, however, is
less likely to be affected by welfare reform than is household income, and is
not dependent on teens’ living arrangements. The second comparison group
was a subset of teens with lower parental education—those who reported
they were not enrolled in college preparatory courses, the only consistent
measure of educational expectations across the two surveys. Adolescent
mothers tend to have lower educational aspirations than adolescents who do
not become mothers (Plotnick and Butler, 1991) and were much less likely
to be enrolled in college prep courses (analysis not shown). The third com-
parison group was a different subset of teens with lower parental educa-
tion—those who reported both drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes
within the past month. Teenagers who engage in one risky behavior, such as
drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes, are more likely to engage in other
risky behaviors, such as sexual intercourse (Luster and Small, 1994; Rose-
nbaum and Kandel, 1990). Thus, the drinking and smoking group may
have personalities and backgrounds similar to those of the minor mothers,
but this group is unlikely to be affected by welfare reform legislation. For
comparison purposes, an analysis including all female minors who were not
mothers is shown.
Income was not used to construct comparison groups, for two reasons: (1)
welfare reform itself may affect household income because of the policy’s
strong emphasis on employment; and (2) teens who live apart from their
parents can be expected to have lower household incomes because their
parents’ income is no longer counted, which thereby affects the composition
of the comparison group.
Table 2 shows characteristics of the three comparison groups over time.
The trends in characteristics among the group that smoked and drank most
resembled, in some ways, the trends among minor mothers. For example,
relative to the other two comparison groups, in 1998, adolescents in this
group were older and experienced a larger decline in public school enroll-
ment. Between 1990 and 1998, the proportion of this group that was non-
Latino and non-African-American increased, as it had among minor moth-
ers. However, the risk-taking group remained substantially less likely to be
African American or Latino compared to minor mothers, while the other
two groups were more racially similar to minor mothers.
Birth Rates
In addition to affecting living arrangements and drop-out rates, welfare

reform may have had an impact on the birth rates of minor mothers. The
TABLE 2
1382
Characteristics of Comparison Groups, Weighted: 1990 Round NELS88 and 1998 Round of NLSY97
No College Aspirations, Low

Low Education Smoked and Drank, Low Ed Ed
1990 1998 1990 1998 1990 1998

(N 5 3,574) (N 5 1,075) (N 5 699) (N 5 158) (N 5 2,689) (N 5 714)
Less than HS 29 25 n 31 18 n 32 28 n
High school 71 75 n 69 82 n 68 72 n
More than HS — — — — — —
Public school 95 91 n 97 87 n 96 90 n
English second language 22 14 n 23 10 n 23 14 n
Age
15 42 35 n 38 26 n 40 34 n
16 48 33 n 51 35 n 47 36 n
17 10 32 n 12 39 n 13 30 n
Race/ethnicity
African American 14 21 n 6 10 14 21 n
Hispanic 17 17 16 11 17 19
Not H or A A 69 61 n 78 79 69 60 n
Region
Northeast 17 19 15 21 15 18
North central 25 24 26 25 26 25
South 39 40 40 33 40 38
West 19 17 19 21 19 19
Rural area 37 36 38 29 n 38 35
Lives with parent 94 93 93 94 93 93
Dropped out 5 7 12 8 7 8
Social Science Quarterly
n
po0.05.
drafters of welfare reform argued that this would be a beneficial outcome of
the law—to discourage minors from having children as a means to set up
independent households financed by welfare benefits. If birth rates changed
among those most likely to be affected by the minor-parent provision, this
would bias the results of the analysis.
Previous research has shown mixed results about the impact of welfare
reform on teen birth rates. Horvath-Rose and Peters (1999) find that welfare
reform requirements for minor mothers are associated with higher nonmar-
ital birth rates among teens. In contrast, Mach (2002) and Lopoo and
DeLeire (2006) find that birth rates declined after the implementation of
TANF. Klerman’s (2005) comprehensive overview of the link between
welfare reform and birth rates showed no consistent effects of welfare reform
policies on childbearing, though this topic has been understudied (Grogger
and Karoly, 2005).
Demographic data show that birth rates among teenage girls hit their peak
in 1991, at 61.9 births per 1,000 teenage girls, and fell to 47.7 births per
1,000 teenage girls in 2000, a substantial decline (Guttmacher Institute,
2006). However, the analyses in this article include female teens with chil-
dren of any age in the household in 1990 and 1998. The children in the
households had a median age of 15 months; therefore, birth rates from
earlier years are relevant. The average birth rate for 1988, 1989, and 1990
was 57 per 1,000 teenage girls, while for 1996, 1997, and 1998 it was 52 per
1,000—not a substantial difference.
Using the NLSY97 and NELS88 data, I tested whether the birth rates of
minor females declined between the two surveys. Controlling for age, race,
and school type, I used logistic regression to test whether the likelihood of
having a child differed between surveys among all girls and among girls with
lower educational aspirations between 1990 and 1998 (analysis not shown).
I found no significant relationship between survey year and likelihood of
having a child. I also used a DD analysis to test whether girls with lower
educational aspirations showed greater declines in the likelihood of having a
child, compared to girls with higher educational aspirations. I found no
significant effects (analysis not shown).
Results
The interaction term for the regression predicting drop-out rates shows
that minor mothers experienced significantly greater declines in these rates,
compared with all female minors who were not mothers (Table 3). Con-
trolling for race/ethnicity, parents’ education, age, school type, English-
language skills, and region of the country, the negative and significant in-
teraction term shows that the drop-out rates of minor mothers declined
significantly more than did the drop-out rates of other female minors
between 1990 and 1998. The second column indicates that this pattern
TABLE 3
1384
School Dropout, Difference-in-Difference OLS Regression Coefficients with Standard Errors
Comparison Groups
Minor Females with Risk-Taking Minor Females Low-Educational-Aspirations

All Minor Females, Lower-Education with Lower-Education Minor Females with Lower-
(N 5 11,344) Parents (N 5 4,917)a Parents (N 5 1,124)a Education Parents (N 5 3,671)a
Difference-in-difference
Minor mother 0.45 n n 0.45 n n 0.39 n n 0.44 n n
(0.02) (0.02) (0.03) (0.02)
Post-welfare 0.01 0.01 0.07 n 0.02
reform (0.00) (0.01) (0.03) (0.01)
Minor mother n Post 0.14 n n 0.14 n n 0.08 0.14 n n
welfare reform (0.02) (0.03) (0.05) (0.04)
Race/ethnicity
African 0.02 n n 0.04 n n 0.11 n n 0.04 n n
American (0.01) (0.01) (0.03) (0.01)
Latino 0.02 n 0.03 n 0.00 0.03 n
(0.01) (0.01) (0.04) (0.02)
Latino/A A (ref) — — — —
Less than high 0.05 n n 0.04 n n 0.10 n n 0.04 n n
school (0.01) (0.01) (0.02) (0.01)
High school — — — —
grad (ref)
More than high 0.01 n n 0.06 0.03 0.06
school (0.00) (0.04) (0.05) (0.04)
TABLE 3—continued
Comparison Groups
Minor Females with Risk-Taking Minor Females Low-Educational-Aspirations

All Minor Females, Lower-Education with Lower-Education Minor Females with Lower-
(N 5 11,344) Parents (N 5 4,917)a Parents (N 5 1,124)a Education Parents (N 5 3,671)a
Age
15 0.13 n n 0.17 n n 0.29 n n 0.19 n n
(0.01) (0.01) (0.03) (0.01)
16 0.11 n n 0.14 n n 0.22 n n 0.16 n n
(0.01) (0.01) (0.03) (0.01)
17 (ref) — — — —
School typeb
Public 0.02 n n 0.04 n 0.10 n 0.04 n
(0.01) (0.02) (0.04) (0.02)
English skills
English second 0.01 0.01 0.00 0.01
language (0.01) (0.01) (0.03) (0.01)
Region
Northeast 0.01 0.00 0.02 0.01
(0.01) (0.01) (0.03) (0.01)
North central 0.01 n n 0.02 0.00 0.021
(0.00) (0.01) (0.03) (0.01)
South (ref) — — — —
West 0.01 n 0.03 n n 0.02 0.03 n
Living Arrangements and School Dropout After Welfare Reform
(0.01) (0.01) (0.03) (0.01)

Adj. R2 0.16 0.19 0.26 0.20
a
Some minor mothers had parents who attended college, and thus this variable was included in the regression analysis; excluding these minor mothers from
the analysis did not change any of the results.
b
Dropouts’ school type was the type of the school they most recently attended.
1385
nn
p 0.01; n0.01o p 0.05.
persisted when the sample was restricted to female minors whose parents
have a high school education or less (the lower-education comparison
group). When the lower-education group was restricted to female minors
with lower educational aspirations (those not taking college prep courses),
the interaction term remained significant. Restricting the lower-education
group to risk-taking minor females (those who reported smoking and
drinking in the previous month), the size of the interaction coefficient de-
creased and became insignificant. This indicates that the drop-out rates of
minor mothers did not decline more than those of the risk-taking group.
Minor mothers showed a significant increase in the likelihood that they
lived with their parents, compared with all female minors who were not
mothers (see Table 4). Controlling for parents’ education, race/ethnicity,
age, school type, English-language skills, and region, the interaction term
was significant and positive. Restricting the comparison group to female
minors whose parents had a high school education or less, the interaction
term remains significant and positive. Further restricting the comparison
group to female minors with lower educational aspirations and lower-ed-
ucation parents, the interaction term remains significant and about the same
size. Using the risk-taking comparison group, the results remain significant
without a substantial decrease in the size of the coefficient.
Similar results were found in an additional sensitivity analysis, using as a
comparison group boys who had no college aspirations and whose parents
had low educational attainment. However, because males have been falling
increasingly behind females in educational attainment in recent years for
reasons not related to welfare reform (Edelman, Holzer, and Offner, 2006),
I did not present the findings in the tables.
Conclusion and Discussion
In 1996, welfare reform required that mothers under age 18 live with their
parents or an adult relative and enroll in school to be eligible for welfare
benefits. These laws were controversial, yet few studies have examined their
consequences. The lack of research on this topic is due, in large part, to the
lack of appropriate data—data that include large samples of minor mothers
interviewed before and after welfare reform. This research addresses that
issue by drawing on two separate national data sources, and using regression
techniques to control for differences in the samples.
The results show that minor mothers experienced substantial declines in
drop-out rates during this period, and that the trend was larger than among
other minor females with similar characteristics—those whose parents had
lower-education levels and those without aspirations of going to college.
Drop-out rates of minor mothers did not decrease significantly when com-
pared with those of risk-taking minors. It may be that other social, policy, or
TABLE 4
Living with Parents, Difference-in-Difference OLS Regression Coefficients with Standard Errors
Comparison Groups
Risk-Taking Minor Low-Educational-Aspirations

All Minor Females, Low-Education Females with Low-Education Minor Females with Low-Education
(N 5 11,344) Parents (N 5 4,917)a Parents (N 5 1,124)a Parents (N 5 3,671)a
Difference-in-difference
Minor mother 0.26 n n 0.27 n n 0.25 n n 0.27 n n
(0.02) (0.02) (0.03) (0.02)
Post-welfare reform 0.01 0.00 0.04 0.01
(0.01) (0.01) (0.03) (0.01)
Minor mother n Post-reform 0.12 n n 0.14 n n 0.11 n 0.15 n n
(0.03) (0.03) (0.05) (0.04)
Race/ethnicity
African American 0.03 n n 0.03 n n 0.03 0.03 n
(0.01) (0.01) (0.03) (0.01)
Latino 0.02 n n 0.02 0.05 0.02
(0.01) (0.01) (0.03) (0.02)
Not Latino/A A (ref) — — — —
Less than high school 0.03 n n 0.03 n n 0.05 n 0.03 n n
(0.01) (0.01) (0.02) (0.01)
High school grad (ref) — — — —
Living Arrangements and School Dropout After Welfare Reform
More than high school 0.01 n n 0.07 0.05 0.07

(0.00) (0.04) (0.05) (0.04)
Age
15 0.07 n n 0.07 n n 0.14 n n 0.08 n n
(0.01) (0.01) (0.03) (0.01)
1387
TABLE 4—continued
1388
Comparison Groups
Risk-Taking Minor Low-Educational-Aspirations

All Minor Females, Low-Education Females with Low-Education Minor Females with Low-Education
(N 5 11,344) Parents (N 5 4,917)a Parents (N 5 1,124)a Parents (N 5 3,671)a
16 0.06 n n 0.06 n n 0.11 n n 0.07 n n
(0.01) (0.02) (0.03) (0.01)
17 (ref) — — — —
School typeb
Public 0.01 0.01 0.06 0.00
(0.01) (0.02) (0.04) (0.02)
English skills
English second language 0.01 n 0.02 n 0.03 0.02
(0.01) (0.01) (0.03) (0.01)
Region
Northeast 0.01 0.01 0.03 0.01
(0.01) (0.01) (0.03) (0.01)
North central 0.02 n n 0.03 n n 0.05 n 0.03 n n
(0.01) (0.01) (0.02) (0.01)
South (ref) — — — —
West 0.01 0.02 0.01 0.01
(0.01) (0.01) (0.03) (0.01)
Adj. R2 0.06 0.07 0.12 0.07
a
Some minor mothers had parents who attended college, and thus this variable was included in the regression analysis; excluding these minor mothers from
the analysis did not change any of the results.
b
Dropouts’ school type was the type of the school they most recently attended.
nn
p 0.01; n0.01o p 0.05.
economic factors, beyond the minor-mother provision in welfare reform,
were responsible for changing drop-out rates.
The results of the DD analysis of parental co-residence were consistent
across all the comparison groups. When compared with adolescents with
lower educational aspirations, lower-education parents, and risk-taking
adolescents, adolescent mothers experienced greater increases in parental
co-residence. This is consistent with the hypothesis that the minor-parent
provision encouraged minor mothers to stay in the parental household.
However, there are several limitations to this analysis. First, using cross-
sectional data from two points in time cannot prove a causal link between
welfare reform and changing behaviors in minor mothers. The analysis
attempts to rule out alternative explanations by comparing the change in
minor mothers’ behaviors to changes in the behaviors of girls who were
similar but not affected by the minor-parent provisions. The results are
consistent with the expected changes; however, the problem of concluding
a causal link, which is inherent to analysis of much observational data,
remains.
Second, the sample size of minor mothers is small. The significant find-
ings across comparison groups, however, provide some reassurance that the
sample was large enough to provide sufficient power for the analyses.
I used a blunt instrument of welfare reform to capture all different types
of welfare reform. The research of Bitler, Gelbach, and Hoynes (2006)
shows that waivers affected living arrangements, while other welfare reforms
did not. Only 10 states included the minor-mother provision in their wel-
fare waivers, which would have made the prereform sample extremely small,
and I was unable to determine whether waivers were driving a relationship
between welfare reform and living arrangements and drop-out rates.
Though there are limitations to this study, the results do show that after
the implementation of the minor-mother provisions, drop-out rates of mi-
nor mothers decreased and parental co-residence increased, as predicted.
These results build on previous research that relies on national data by using
data closer in time to welfare reform; focusing specifically on minors; and
using different, multiple comparison groups. The results provide some
support for the findings of Offner (2003) and Kaetsner, Korenman, and
O’Neill (2003) that welfare was associated with lowered school drop-out
rates. Because the comparison groups used in this research are quite different
and the data sets are different, this provides more evidence that the decline
in teen drop-out rates is associated with welfare reform.
Most would argue that decreased drop-out rates are good for minor
mothers and may prevent future welfare use. Whether living with parents is
beneficial to minor mothers is less clear. Some research suggests that minors
who live apart from their parents are more likely to abuse their children
(Flanagan et al., 1995). On the other hand, research also shows that minor
mothers who improved child-care competence after participating in a service
program were sometimes undercut by their mothers (Rosman and
Yoshikawa, 2001), and that adolescent mothers experienced higher levels of
distress (Kalil et al., 1998) when they lived with their mothers. Further
research that examines the well-being of minor mothers who live with their
parents would be beneficial to understanding the full impact of welfare
reform on minor mothers.
Note that this analysis does not identify the mechanism by which welfare
reform has affected minor mothers. They may have been more likely to live
with their parents following welfare reform because they were working
toward meeting the new requirements. States have been slow to set up
alternative living arrangements for minor mothers (Duffy and Levin-
Epstein, 2002), which may also contribute to the increase in living with
parents among minor mothers. Alternatively, minor mothers may have de-
cided against even applying for welfare because they did not expect to
qualify, and living with parents may have become their only source of
income support. Research suggests that lowering welfare benefits is associ-
ated with unmarried mothers’ remaining in their parental home (Ruggles,
1997). It is possible that any restriction in welfare benefits may cause more
minor mothers to live with their parents. Research that identifies the mech-
anisms through which welfare reform alters behaviors is an important ad-
dition to this research.
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Living Arrangements and School Dropout

Among Minor Mothers Following

Heather Koball, Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.

SOCIAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY, Volume 88, Number 5, December 2007

The goal of the analysis is to examine whether welfare reform increased

Changes between surveys in the demographic characteristics of the re-

Minor Mothers Not Minor Mothers

1990 1998 1990 1998

Latino in 1998 than in 1990. Minor mothers in 1998 also experienced a

A DD analysis was used to examine whether drop-out rates decreased and

In addition to affecting living arrangements and drop-out rates, welfare

No College Aspirations, Low

1990 1998 1990 1998 1990 1998

School Dropout, Difference-in-Difference OLS Regression Coefficients with Standard Errors

Minor Females with Risk-Taking Minor Females Low-Educational-Aspirations

Minor Females with Risk-Taking Minor Females Low-Educational-Aspirations

(0.01) (0.01) (0.03) (0.01)

Conclusion and Discussion

Risk-Taking Minor Low-Educational-Aspirations

More than high school 0.01 n n 0.07 0.05 0.07

Risk-Taking Minor Low-Educational-Aspirations

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