Has the Social Safety Net Been ALTARED? (continued)

Findings

Client-Survey Results
Over three-quarters, 78.5 percent, of the survey respondents indicated that they had a need of some type. The most commonly expressed need of TANF respondents was for help with utilities (44.0 percent), followed by transportation (41.5 percent), childcare (40.5 percent), food (37.5 percent), rent (32.5 percent), emotional support (27.6 percent), diapers and toys (24.5 percent), clothes (24.4 percent) and finally a place to stay (15.4 percent) (see Figure 1).

Many of the needs expressed by current and former welfare recipients were unmet or only partially met. The proportion of respondents who expressed a need for help and actually received most or all of the help they felt they required are as follows: Childcare needs were most frequently met (46.5 percent). However, less than half of the respondents who expressed a need for childcare indicated that they had received most or all of the help they needed. The next likely needs to be met for welfare recipients were a place to stay (42.3 percent), emotional support (38.5 percent), transportation (35.3 percent), diapers and toys (30.3 percent), and help with utilities (28.1 percent). The needs that were the most difficult to meet for welfare recipients were help with rent (26.9 percent), food (18.2 percent), and clothes (15.5 percent). When we looked at all sources of help taken together including friends and family, township trustees, community agencies, and religious organizations, we found no statistically significant differences in the ability of individuals on TANF and AFDC to meet their needs (see Figure 2).

We also looked at the characteristics of survey respondents who expressed needs for help and those who actually received help from FBOs. These results are summarized in Table 3. Individuals who expressed a need for assistance were more likely to be female, divorced, were less likely to have ever married. Those in need of help earned less, and were less likely to be working. There were fewer adults and about the same number of children in the households of those who needed help. Additionally, we analyzed several events or actions taken by respondents that indicate extreme need. These individuals were more likely to not have had enough to eat (25 percent), to have been homeless (11 percent), have utilities turned off (33 percent), have health or drug problems (30 percent), have asked for spare change or begged for work (10 percent), sold Food Stamps or passed bad checks (6 percent), or sold plasma (10 percent) to try to make ends meet. While there were no differences overall between the TANF and AFDC groups, those with "child-only" assistance cases and those who had been sanctioned under the TANF program were more likely to express a need for help. This may be because those with needs have other characteristics that make them more likely to be restricted or sanctioned and/or the restrictions or sanctions themselves may impose an additional financial hardship on this group of respondents.

Separate analyses, not reported in Table 3, looked specifically at whether TANF recipients were more or less likely to report a need in one of the nine need categories, rather than total combined needs. TANF and AFDC recipients did not have significantly different needs in any category with one exception: childcare needs were 5 percent higher for TANF recipients.

Among those who expressed a need for help in one or more areas, we also compared the characteristics of those who did and did not receive help from the FBOs. First, and perhaps most important, membership in the TANF or AFDC groups was unrelated to receiving help from an FBO. This suggests that overall, the Indiana welfare reforms, per se, did not affect the receipt of help from FBOs. Second, we found several differences in the characteristics of individuals who did or did not get help from FBOs. Those getting help from FBOs were older, white, had more children in the household, and were more likely to be married or separated and less likely to have never married or be widowed as well as less likely to be working. Those receiving help from FBOs were more likely to not have had enough to eat (36 percent), to be homeless (18 percent), have utilities turned off (41 percent), have health or drug problems (35 percent), have panhandled (17 percent), have sold Food Stamps or written bad checks (9 percent), and have sold plasma to get by (17 percent). The proportions of individuals falling into these categories are relatively high suggesting that FBOs work with truly needy individuals, a finding that replicates that of other researchers.41

In addition to the bivariate analyses described above, we estimated a series of logistic regressions to determine the net effects of a wide variety of factors on receipt of help from FBOs. Behavior of AFDC recipients who think they are subject to TANF rules are more likely to change their behavior in ways that more closely resemble that of TANF recipients. Many randomly assigned members of the AFDC control group indicated that they were subject to the new TANF rules, serving to undermine the experiment design. Under such circumstances, multivariate methods should be used to control for the personal, family, and other characteristics of respondents that may have affected their receipt of help from FBOs.
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