How Different ARE Welfare and Working Families? And Do Those Differences Matter for Children's Achievement?

We investigate in this paper the extent to which families receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) differ from other families in mental health and the way they organize their time, manage their households, and spend their money. Our data come from two nationally-representative sources covering different historical periods. The first gathered its information in the early 1970s; the second in the early 1990s. The first of our data sets continued to follow family members, including children, until the mid-1990s. This allows us to investigate whether children growing up in families receiving welfare or having "bad" attitudes or family processes in the early 1970s showed lower achievements 20 years later, when the children had entered early adulthood.