Summary: Seventeen states have published information on the status of their families who have left welfare. However, only seven of the 17 states had enough information on a sample of families to generalize their findings. These seven studies found that most of the adults in families staying off the welfare rolls were employed at some point after leaving welfare. Significant numbers of families returned to welfare, however. The limited information on the economic status of the families being tracked indicated than many who leave welfare find jobs that are low-paying. The low wages of these jobs underscore the importance of income supports, such as subsidized medical and child care and the earned income credit. Federal and state policies and programs to assist low-income working families are likely to play a critical role in helping these families stay off welfare and become self-sufficient. GAO's attempts to describe the condition of former welfare families were constrained by the data now available from early state tracking studies. For example, the high nonresponse rates in many state studies limit the usefulness of the responses because generalizations cannot be made to all families of interest. Efforts are under way at both the federal and state levels to improve the usefulness of the data being collected to assess the status of former welfare families. Most states either are currently studying or plan to study former welfare families, and the Department of Health and Human Services has recently funded 14 projects to track and monitor families who have left welfare. GAO summarized this report in testimony before Congress; see: Welfare Reform: States' Implementation Progress and Information on Former Recipients, by Cynthia M. Fagnoni, Director of Education, Workforce, and Income Security Issues, before the Subcommittee on Human Resources, House Committee on Ways and Means. GAO/T-HEHS-99-116, May 27 (21 pages).
