Preface

The New Chance Demonstration, and this report, focused on a population of great concern as the nation implements the new welfare law: young women who have children as teenagers and are high school dropouts. New Chance was a voluntary demonstration project that provided comprehensive education, training, and other services intended to increase the long-term self-sufficiency and well-being of these mothers and their children. While this approach is very different from that expressed in various large-scale welfare reform strategies, its lessons on the complexity of young lives lived in poverty challenge all who are interested in change.

The demonstration was developed in the mid-1980s, when the problem of unwed teenage childbearing was growing, but solutions were lacking. Research showed that young mothers who were high school dropouts constituted the group at highest risk of long-term welfare receipt, and like many older welfare recipients they were unlikely to be able to earn more than they received on welfare unless they acquired more skills. A number of funders and program operators embraced the New Chance approach as one that promised to address both the needs of young families and society’s concern with the increasing rates and costs of out-of-wedlock births. The findings presented in this report speak to that concern and also to the related issues of targeting scarce welfare reform dollars, preparing young school dropouts for work, and assisting highly disadvantaged children of teen mothers.

The study of New Chance is one of the few large-scale, rigorous evaluations of programs designed to change the outcomes for this population. This is the last in a series of reports from that study. Earlier reports described a mixed picture of effects. A variety of community-based organizations implemented the program well in 16 diverse sites, yet participation by the program’s enrollees was uneven. Some came and stayed, but others attended sporadically or dropped out after a brief period.

At the 18-month follow-up point, the program had created a substantial increase in educational attainment (acquisition of a GED, which is frequently a prerequisite for occupational training programs), greater use of good-quality child care, and a modest improvement in participants’ parenting skills, balanced against high rates of repeat pregnancy, inconsistent program attendance, and the fact that more than 80 percent of the young mothers were still on welfare.

A monograph based on in-depth interviews with 50 former New Chance enrollees pointed to some of the circumstances behind this behavior: jobs found and lost, unplanned pregnancies, ambivalence about the balance between work and parenting responsibilities, and the important role played by family members, partners, and peers in supporting or undermining the young women’s efforts to move forward. It offered moving testimony that behind the statistics is a group of young women who are determined to build a better life for their children but who, with few resources and little support, are frequently stymied in their progress.

This report extends the story to 42 months of follow-up. The young mothers are now 22 years old, on average, and their children range from infancy to schoolage. The report addresses the question of whether the 18-month effects have translated into gains in employment, reductions in time on welfare, and improved outcomes for the children of program participants.

On many of these measures, the outcomes for the mothers have improved since they enrolled in New Chance. The sobering news is that the absolute levels of progress leave these young families far from self-sufficiency, and for most outcomes the New Chance program did not improve progress over and above that shown by an equivalent group of young women who did not attend New Chance. Furthermore, the New Chance experience has created some unplanned, small, but troubling effects for some of the most fragile families in the study. For example, mothers at high risk of clinical depression at the outset were, at follow-up, at greater risk of depression and reported higher levels of parental stress than their counterparts in the control group. They also believed that their children were doing less well on measures of social behavior.

Taken together with the results from studies of other approaches to improving the lives of young, poor mothers who are dropouts, these results speak to the importance of developing earlier interventions that succeed in preventing the constellation of poverty, academic failure, and nonmarital teen births. They also speak to the continued progress, striving, and tenacity of the young families, and their need for support as they struggle.

The New Chance Demonstration has been a remarkable partnership of many funders, states, and local programs. We are greatly indebted for their support and the cooperation of the young women in the New Chance study.

Judith M. Gueron
President

New Chance, a national research and demonstration program that operated between 1989 and 1992, was developed in a policy context marked by intense concern about teenage childbearing. That concern reflected the public's distress about three developments: the dramatic increase in the rate of out-of-wedlock childbearing over the past three decades, the long-term welfare costs incurred by young, poor women who become mothers, and the negative life prospects faced by their children. Little was known, however, about what kinds of programs and policies could help young mothers on welfare attain economic independence and could foster their children's development as well.

The recent enactment of a federal welfare law, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, is likely to alter the welfare policy environment in several important respects. For one thing, it has the potential to sever the connection between early childbearing and high expenditures for public assistance by imposing time limits on the use of federal funds to support cash grants to most needy families, including those headed by mothers age 19 (or age 18, if they are not enrolled in school) and older. For another, it provides financial incentives to states that reduce their rates of out-of-wedlock pregnancy.

Against this changed backdrop, the New Chance Demonstration provides findings—about the behavior of young mothers who are receiving welfare, the problems they face, and their efforts to move toward self-sufficiency—that are highly relevant to the new welfare scenario. The evidence suggests that states will continue to confront substantial challenges in helping young mothers find jobs and move off welfare before the time limits on their receipt of aid have been reached.

The New Chance Demonstration was a rare and important opportunity to test the value of comprehensive services in assisting a disadvantaged group of families headed by young mothers who had first given birth as teenagers, who had dropped out of high school, and who were receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC).¹ The program, which operated in 16 locations (or "sites") in 10 states across the country, sought to help the young mothers acquire educational and vocational credentials and skills so that they could secure jobs offering opportunities for advancement and could thereby reduce, and eventually eliminate, their use of welfare. It also sought to motivate and assist participants in postponing additional childbearing and to help them become better parents. Finally, New Chance was explicitly "two-generational" in its approach, seeking to enhance the cognitive abilities, health, and socioemotional well-being of enrollees' children. The program was, for the most part, voluntary; that is, young women were generally not required to attend in order to receive public assistance. Instead, most joined it because they wanted to earn their General Educational Development (GED, or high school equivalency) certificates and the program offered free child care to enable them to participate.

The program model was spelled out in guidelines developed in consultation with academicians, program operators, and other experts. The experts' recommendations reflected the prevailing view that earlier programs with a limited focus (for example, perinatal health care or education) had been largely inadequate and that a comprehensive intervention was needed to respond to the complex problems that young mothers commonly face. Accordingly, the model called for participants to receive a wide array of services addressing the young women's multiple roles and needs as students, prospective employees, mothers, family members, and partners. The services included instruction in basic academic skills and in subjects covered on the GED test, career exposure and employability development classes, occupational skills training, work experience, job placement assistance, health and family planning classes and services, parenting workshops, and "life skills" classes on communication and decision-making skills. These components were intended to reinforce and complement one another; together they were to convey a consistent set of messages about education, work, childrearing, and personal empowerment.²

The program model and demonstration were developed by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC), a private nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that develops and studies initiatives to improve the well-being and self-sufficiency of poor people. MDRC designed and carried out the research agenda, provided initial training and ongoing technical assistance to the demonstration sites, helped them secure modest amounts of supplemental funding, and monitored their compliance with the program model and the research.

To evaluate the program's effectiveness, young women who applied and were determined to be eligible for New Chance were randomly assigned to one of two groups: the experimental group, whose members could enroll in the program, or the control group, whose members could not join New Chance but could receive other services available in their communities. To ascertain both short- and longer-term program effects, comparable information was collected from each member of both groups through in-home survey interviews conducted approximately 1½ and 3½ years after the individual had been randomly assigned. The measured average differences between the two groups' outcomes over time (such as their differences in rates of GED attainment, employment, or subsequent childbearing) and between the outcomes for their children are the observed results (or impacts) of New Chance. This, the final report on the New Chance program and its impacts, examines the trajectories of 2,079 young mothers who responded to the 3½-year survey.³

The Impact Findings in Brief

At the time of the 3½-year interview, the young women were, on average 22.4 years old, and most had children who were still toddlers. Contrary to the common stereotype of these young mothers as immobilized by—or content with—their circumstances, the evaluation found that over the 3½-year follow-up period the young women in the research sample—experimental and control group members alike—were moving forward in many ways. At baseline (that is, random assignment), fewer than 10 percent of sample members had a high school diploma or a GED; by the 3½-year point, almost half the sample had earned one of these credentials. Sixty-three percent of sample members did not work at all during the year prior to random assignment; in contrast, over half were employed at some point during the 12 months before the 3½-year interviews, and the large majority of those who worked did so for 30 hours a week or more. These rates of employment are surprisingly high given the young age of the mothers and the fact that most had very young children. Over the follow-up period, the proportion of sample members receiving AFDC dropped considerably (although the majority were still on the rolls at the 3½-year interview), the proportion of women who used a reliable method of birth control rose steadily, and fewer women were at risk of depression. Nevertheless, the large majority remained poor and on welfare after 3½ years.

Although experimental group members received more varied services in greater quantity than did their control group counterparts and received them sooner, the differential was not large, especially with regard to education- and employment-related services. This is partly because during the period of the demonstration many education and training programs were available in the New Chance communities, and members of the control group participated in these in unexpectedly high numbers. At the same time, because of absenteeism and early departures from the program, members of the experimental group received on average a much lower intensity and duration of services than had been anticipated, and many never participated in skills training, work experience, or job search—the activities in the program model most closely related to employment.

The New Chance evaluation is not, therefore, a test of extensive services compared with no services or minimal ones. Rather, the evaluation measures the effectiveness of a particular mix and level of services that were relatively easy for those in the experimental group to obtain against another mix and level of services that individuals in the control group could secure only if they displayed somewhat greater initiative.

The findings indicate that while experimental and control group members both advanced in many ways, experimental group members did not advance further than control group members in most respects. New Chance did boost participants' levels of GED receipt above those of the control group. The added services provided by the program, however, did not help participants secure skills training credentials, get and maintain employment, or reduce their rates of welfare receipt or subsequent childbearing relative to outcomes for control group members. The program did not improve their children's preschool readiness scores, and it had unexpected small but negative effects on participants' emotional well-being and their ratings of their children's behavior.

These results are puzzling, for MDRC observers judged all the sites to offer some high-quality services, and the large majority of young women in the experimental group said that they liked the program and benefited from it. It is likely that many factors, sometimes working in combination, account for the absence of impacts and for unanticipated impacts; different explanations may hold for different outcome areas. The possible factors include the slender differential in service receipt between experimental and control group members, the low absolute amount of services received by those in the experimental group, the possibility that some direct program effects produced unanticipated side-effects, and constraints on the magnitude of impacts imposed by larger social and environmental forces. It may also be that the program model itself was inappropriate for many young women.

These findings, unfortunately, are consistent with the results of other evaluations of programs serving young mothers on welfare who do not have a high school diploma or a GED, and the unsuccessful records of these programs highlight the importance of continuing to seek effective ways to assist these young women in improving their lives. But the impact results do not mean that the services New Chance provided (and that control group members received on their own) were of no value. Additional analyses were conducted to estimate the effects of service receipt for experimental and control group members together. While less definitive than the analyses undergirding the impact estimates, the results suggest that young women who received more than 18 weeks of education were far more likely to earn GEDs than those who did not and that young women who received skills training and attended college earned higher wages than their counterparts who did not receive postsecondary education or training. These findings held true even after other differences between those who received more or fewer weeks of education, and those who attended training or college and those who did not, were controlled statistically.

Thus, the findings indicate that the combination and quantity of services that New Chance participants received, on average, did not result in improved outcomes vis-à-vis those achieved by control group members. But they also suggest that receiving adequate amounts of specific kinds of services can make a difference in the mothers' lives—a finding of considerable importance to program operators and policy makers.

The remainder of this Executive Summary describes the young women who came forward for New Chance, their progress, and the issues they faced. It outlines the New Chance model as conceived and as put in place. It reports the impacts for the research sample as a whole and for particular subgroups of sample members. Finally, it comments on the lessons and cautions that the findings suggest for program operators and policy makers.

The Program's Service Structure

The 16 local New Chance sponsors shown in Table ES-1 were, in the main, community service organizations and schools and school districts. They also included a community college, a family service center overseen by the county government, a collaboration between the school district and the Job Corps, and a Private Industry Council (the local entity that distributes federal job training funds allocated under the Job Training Partnership Act). Although most sites selected for the demonstration had some previous experience serving young mothers, none was operating a program with all the elements of New Chance; all had to supplement their existing services and integrate them in a single program.

The program model, summarized in Table ES-2, shows that New Chance unfolded in two phases. At most sites, Phase I centered on education, career exposure, and a number of services falling under the general rubric of "personal development" (for example, parenting, family planning, and life skills). During this phase, services were delivered mostly at the program site—a "one-stop shopping" approach designed to facilitate participation. Typically, the program ran from 9 a.m. until 3 p.m. five days a week, with daily attendance at all classes expected. Local programs were intended to be small in size, enrolling 100 participants over 12 to 18 months and serving about 40 participants at any given time, in order to promote an intimate and personal environment in which participants and staff could establish close bonds.

Phase II services encompassed occupational skills training and work experience (both of which were generally off-site) and ultimately job placement assistance. Although college was not a formal part of the New Chance model, staff members at some sites encouraged participants to enroll in college, especially in two-year programs with a vocational focus.

Enrollees were permitted to remain in the program for 18 months, throughout which time case managers were expected to counsel them and monitor their progress. For as long as they remained active, participants also had access to child care at no cost to themselves; often, the care was provided at the program site.

As the preceding description suggests, New Chance services were directed primarily toward the young mothers and (in the form of child care and pediatric health care) toward their children. Local programs made efforts to reach out to the young women's parents and partners (for example, by inviting them to "graduation" ceremonies and other festivities), but the focus was on individual participants rather than on their extended families or the broader environments in which they lived.

Findings Regarding Research Sample Members

• The New Chance sites recruited a diverse but generally very disadvantaged group of young mothers.

Upon entry into the study, the young women averaged just under 19 years of age and, on average, had first given birth at age 16. Most (78 percent) were members of minority groups; fewer than one in ten had ever been married. About one third already had two or more children, and over half (53 percent) had a child under a year old. Indicative of their disaffection from school was the fact that 38 percent had dropped out before their first pregnancy and that applicants had typically been out of school for more than two years when they were randomly assigned to the experimental or control group. While over three quarters of sample members (79 percent) had some work experience, 63 percent had not worked at all in the 12 months before they applied to New Chance. Importantly, over half registered scores on a widely used scale indicating that they were at risk of clinical depression.

In short, the young women applying to New Chance had characteristics that for many would suggest difficult progress toward a GED and employment. They were also mostly adolescents, unsure of themselves and their goals. And they were responsible for the care of very young children.

Nonetheless, there was also considerable diversity within the research sample. Thus, while almost one quarter (24 percent) read at the 6th-grade level or below, 30 percent read at the 10th-grade level or above. And while 17 percent grew up in families that had always received welfare, 36 percent grew up in families that had never done so. These differences point to the possibility of different effects for different subgroups of the New Chance population.

• During their stay in New Chance and afterwards, participants faced many barriers to steady participation and stable employment.

Some of the problems that interfered with the young women's participation were ones experienced by working mothers in all income categories: children's illnesses (as well as their own) and breakdowns in child care arrangements. Other problems, however, were exacerbated by participants' poverty; for example, nearly half of an early group of enrollees were homeless or at high risk of homelessness during their stay in the program.

Case managers became aware of some problems over time, as they learned more about participants' lives or as these problems hindered attendance. Thus, for example, between 10 and 20 percent of the early cohort of experimental group women were known by the case managers to be physically abused by their partners, to use drugs or alcohol to such an extent that it interfered with their program participation (or to have partners or relatives who did so), or to be discouraged by important people in their lives from attending New Chance or otherwise advancing toward self-sufficiency.

• Despite these problems, over time members of both research groups moved forward in many areas of their lives.

When they entered the research sample, almost 94 percent of the sample members held neither a high school diploma nor a GED; by the 3½-year point, just under half (49.3 percent) had received one of these credentials. Employment rates also rose steadily throughout the follow-up period. In the year prior to entering the study, only 37 percent worked at all; during the last year of follow-up, in contrast, 52 percent were employed at some point. There was also substantial growth in average monthly earnings, both because of an increase in the proportion of sample members who were employed and because those who did work earned more. The rate of AFDC receipt remained high—nearly three quarters of the young women were receiving welfare at the 3½-year point. Nonetheless, this fraction represents a sizable drop from the 95 percent receiving assistance at baseline.

Time brought positive changes in the young women's personal lives as well. For one thing, they were doing more to plan their childbearing. Although the majority of young women experienced a repeat pregnancy and birth during the follow-up period, at the 3½-year point over half were using a reliable method of contraception. Also, there was a significant drop in the percentage of young mothers who were at risk of depression, although that proportion remained distressingly high (53 percent at baseline versus 44 percent at the 3½-year point).

Findings on Program Implementation, Participation, and Costs

• The demonstration sites put in place all the early components and were, with only a few exceptions, able to offer the hours of each service prescribed by the program guidelines; some components, however, were easier to implement than others.

The sites were all able to mount the early components of the New Chance model and to provide a relatively uniform treatment. Building the program infrastructure required a great deal of effort, however, especially given the multiple activities to be put in place in the compressed start-up period, which was only about six months long.

At all sites, education—both instruction in basic academic skills and GED preparation—was a central activity during Phase I, usually scheduled for about 12 to 15 hours a week. Parenting and life skills classes were each scheduled for about two hours weekly during this phase as well. Education proved to be one of the easiest components to implement, in part because experienced instructors were widely available and in part because enrollees were themselves interested in getting their GED certificates.

Other activities posed greater difficulties. The implementation of career exploration and preemployment skills instruction was slow and often unsystematic, because sites lacked experience with these components and ready-made curricula in these areas were unavailable. And because of time constraints, personal discomfort, or lack of expertise, case managers did not consistently use the individual counseling sessions to follow up on the young women's family planning practices, as prescribed by the program model.

• Later activities—skills training, work internships, college and job placement, and ongoing case management—were more difficult to implement and were less uniform across sites.

Phase II activities, mostly delivered off-site, were much more individualized than the earlier components. For each participant, staff had to find an activity in the community that was not only appropriate to her needs, interests, and abilities but also accessible and available when she was ready to enter it. Because skills training and employment resources varied from site to site, there were considerable differences among the sites in the way this phase of the program model was implemented. Moreover, because of the demands of their on-site caseloads, case managers were seldom able to maintain the biweekly contact with off-site participants that was specified in the program guidelines.

• The quality of child care at the on-site day care centers was fairly good— higher than that typically provided by centers serving primarily low-income families, although below the level of care in facilities that have been found to improve children's developmental outcomes.

Regular on-site child care was provided to New Chance participants at 9 of the 16 sites; 2 additional sites offered child care on a temporary, drop-in basis. (Programs without on-site facilities helped participants with their child care arrangements, sometimes through linkages with nearby child care centers.) Information from staff at the on-site centers indicated that the New Chance child care centers generally met or exceeded experts' standards in terms of such structural characteristics as group size and child-to-staff ratios. Furthermore, observers who were trained to rate various aspects of child care visited 11 centers (4 of them off-site) and found that they were providing care that compared favorably with the care provided in centers serving low-income families, as reported in two major studies of child care centers. The observers rated the care as being of reasonably good quality. The quality of care, however, was not as high as that which characterizes child care programs that have been found to foster children's development.

• In general, participation was much less intensive than had been planned, although members of the experimental group varied considerably in the regularity and duration of their program attendance.

About 89 percent of experimental group members participated in some New Chance activity. (The remaining 11 percent dropped out between the time they were randomly assigned and the actual start of program activities.) On average, the young women participated for 296 hours in activities other than counseling, for which hours of participation were not counted, within 18 months after random assignment. This average conceals a great deal of variation, however; along with the 11 percent who did not participate at all, another 25 percent participated for 100 hours or fewer, while 22 percent registered more than 500 hours.

In part, low participation hours reflect erratic attendance, which was a serious problem at many sites, and in part they reflect early departures from the program. Although young mothers were permitted to stay in New Chance for 18 months, the average number of months (not necessarily continuous) they actually were active in the program was only 6.4—roughly one third of the maximum.

High absenteeism and early departures, taken together, made for a program treatment that was considerably more attenuated than planners had intended. In fact, on average, participants got only between 30 and 40 percent of the quantity of services planned for Phase I. The majority of enrollees who were unsuccessful in earning a GED while in New Chance (who constituted the majority of those in the experimental group) never moved on to Phase II activities at all, having dropped out of the program first. Consequently, only about one third of the members of the experimental group received the skills training that program planners envisioned as critical to their obtaining good jobs. Sites tried to improve participation in various ways—by stating requirements and expectations more clearly, by following up on absentees promptly, and by developing rewards for good attendance—but with inconsistent results.

• Members of the experimental group received a greater quantity of services, as well as more varied services, than did their control group counterparts, and they also received them sooner.

As Table ES-3 shows, a higher proportion of experimental than of control group members received each type of service; experimental group members also received a greater quantity of these services. For example, 84 percent of the experimental group members attended adult basic education or GED classes during the 3½-year follow-up period, and they averaged 26 weeks in these classes; 63 percent of the control group members participated in such classes, for an average of 16 weeks.

In accordance with the program's intent to deliver a wide array of services, those in the experimental group also received more kinds of services than those in the control group. The average experimental group member received five different services, while the average control group member received only three.

Finally, experimental group members received services sooner after random assignment than did control group members.

• Levels of service receipt by control group members in the New Chance Demonstration greatly exceeded expectations and were higher than those found in previous demonstration programs for young mothers.

Although it was expected that New Chance, as a voluntary program, would draw applicants who were motivated to take part in the kinds of activities New Chance offered, the level of service receipt among control group members was much higher than anticipated. Education- and employment-related services outside of New Chance were generally readily available in the communities where research sample members lived, and members of both research groups made extensive use of them. (Experimental group members mostly availed themselves of other service provider agencies after they had left New Chance.) Thus, while over the 3½ years 94 percent of the experimental group women participated in employment-related services—that is, education, skills training, or organized group job search activities that could be expected to provide access to the skills and credentials necessary for getting jobs—so did 85 percent of the women in the control group.

This level of service receipt by control group members can be put into perspective by comparing it with the findings of other studies. New Chance control group members received more services than control group members in several other demonstration programs enrolling disadvantaged young mothers and, indeed, received more services than did the experimental group members in other programs for this population that required participation as a condition of receiving welfare. This fact must be borne in mind when the impacts of the various demonstrations are compared.

• Both experimental and control group members continued to participate in education and skills training throughout the follow-up period.

Experimental group members who participated in education and skills training tended to do so earlier than control group members; nonetheless, some 30 percent of the members of both groups were attending an education program, and about 16 percent were attending a skills training program, at some point during the last year of the 3½-year follow-up period. In fact, the average sample member was enrolled in education or training for one quarter of the follow-up period.

This extended participation in education and training resulted in deferred entry into employment. Participation in education or training was the single most important reason that respondents to the 3½-year interview who were neither working nor looking for work gave for their absence from the labor force. One implication is that both experimental and control group members can be expected to work more as they move out of these activities into the labor market.

• The cost of providing New Chance services to a young woman assigned to the program was approximately $9,000, with child care, recruitment, and case management services accounting for almost two thirds of the cost.

The majority of New Chance expenditures were for child care and case management, services that were considered necessary to support participation in New Chance. By contrast,

education, skills training, and other classes and workshops accounted for a much smaller share of the costs of implementing New Chance.

• Comparing the total cost of all services provided to members of the experimental and control groups, the net cost of New Chance was estimated to range from $6,197 to $7,445, depending on the estimation method.

Outside of New Chance, many members of the control group received services that were similar to those received by members of the experimental group and that involved substantial costs. Members of the experimental group also received services outside of the New Chance program. A range of possible net costs is presented because the costs of services to control group members, and of services provided to experimental group members outside of New Chance, could not be measured with the same level of precision as New Chance program costs. The cost of services provided to control group members is estimated to be between $5,555 and $9,024, depending on the method used. Estimates of the corresponding total cost per experimental group member (including New Chance and non–New Chance services) range from $13,000 to $15,221. As a result, estimates of the program’s net cost range from $6,197 to $7,445. As with the New Chance program costs, most of the net costs were accounted for by the provision of child care and case management to New Chance participants, with education and training services accounting for less than a third of the net costs.

Program Impacts on Education and Training Credentials

• Experimental group members were more likely than control group members to receive a GED and to earn college credits.

As the program intended, New Chance raised experimental group members' GED attainment above that of control group members (see Table ES-4). At the 3½-year point, 45 percent of the experimental group members and 33 percent of their control group counterparts had attained this credential. The difference was statistically significant—that is, unlikely to have arisen by chance. (Statistically significant differences between outcomes for experimental and control group members are referred to as program impacts or effects.)

Although few members of either group attended high school, those in the control group were significantly more likely than those in the experimental group to have earned a high school diploma by the time of the 3½-year interview. At that point, 52 percent of the experimental group members held either a GED or a high school diploma, as did 44 percent of the control group members; this 8 percentage point difference, while statistically significant, was smaller than expected.

New Chance also had a small but significant effect on the proportion of young women who earned college credits toward an A.A. or B.A. degree. Fourteen percent of experimental group members and 11 percent of control group members reported having earned such credits.

• Increased participation in education classes was associated with an increased rate of credential attainment.

Additional analyses were conducted to explore the relationship between the quantity of education services received and the attainment of education credentials. These analyses controlled statistically for the likelihood that those who receive a high amount of services are different in many respects from those who receive a low amount. The results, while less definitive than the impact findings based on comparisons of outcomes for experimental and control group members, strongly indicate that receiving more than 18 weeks of adult basic education and GED classes was associated with a sizable increase in the proportion of sample members earning a GED credential.

• Despite greater participation by experimental group members in skills training, members of the two research groups were equally likely to earn a trade license or certificate.

About one quarter of the women in both groups had earned a trade license or certificate by the 3½-year interview. About one in six sample members (18 percent of the experimental group members and 16 percent of the control group members, a difference that is not statistically significant) had earned both a GED or high school diploma and a trade license and thus might be considered especially attractive to employers.

• Despite experimental group members' higher rate of GED receipt, the program did not have an impact on educational achievement as measured by reading test scores.

Reading scores on the Tests of Adult Basic Education (TABE) in the 1½ years following entry into the study rose from the 7.6 grade level to the 7.8 grade level for experimental group members and from the 7.7 to the 7.9 grade level for control group members. There was no significant difference between the two groups in their reading levels at either baseline or follow-up, nor between the size of the gains registered by experimental and control group members.

Impacts on Living Arrangements

• Changes in living arrangements were common among members of both research groups, but New Chance may have accelerated this process among members of the experimental group by helping some participants move out on their own when program staff had reason to believe a move was necessary; the result was greater instability in the living arrangements of members of the experimental group.

Young adulthood is often a stage when living arrangements are in flux and when many people are testing alternatives to living with their parents. There is evidence that New Chance speeded up this process when program staff perceived participants to be in abusive or highly conflictual living arrangements and intervened.

Experimental group members moved an average of 4.0 times between the birth of their youngest child (that is, the youngest at the time of random assignment) and the 3½-year follow-up point, while control group members moved 3.7 times—a difference that, while small, was statistically significant (see Table ES-5). At the 1½-year follow-up interview, more experimental than control group members (23 versus 19 percent) reported living with a partner or husband, and fewer reported living with a parent or a grandparent (28 percent versus 35 percent). These differences had disappeared by the 3½-year interview, so that while control group members did not move away from parents as quickly as experimental group members they eventually did so.

At 3½ years, a somewhat greater proportion of experimental than control group members were living without any of their children (5 versus 3 percent, respectively); the reason for this finding is uncertain. Experimental group members were also more likely than women in the control group to report having had trouble finding a good place to live in the past 12 months, although large percentages of women in both groups (42 percent of the experimental group members and 38 percent of the control group members) experienced this problem.

Impacts on Fertility, Health, and Emotional Well-Being

• Over time, the two groups had similar rates of pregnancies, births, and abortions.

As Table ES-6 shows, about three quarters of the young mothers in both groups had another pregnancy during the follow-up period, and just over half had another baby. New Chance did not reduce the rate of pregnancies or childbearing. Indeed, women in the experimental group were more likely than women in the control group to be pregnant during 9 of the first 24 months after random assignment. (This increase in pregnancy rates appears to be related to the fact that at the 1½-year point, although not at 3½ years, women in the experimental group were more likely to be living with a partner.) By the 3½-year point, however, the cumulative pregnancy rates of the two groups did not differ significantly, nor did the cumulative rates of abortions and live births.

• The New Chance findings are in line with those of other demonstration programs, which also have found it difficult to reduce the rate of subsequent pregnancies and births among teenage mothers.

A majority of disadvantaged young mothers in several other research and demonstration programs, like those in New Chance, had a subsequent pregnancy within two years after baseline, and a sizable minority had a subsequent birth. None of these programs proved effective in reducing fertility. This finding suggests that many young mothers may not be strongly motivated to postpone childbearing or may actively want another child; it may also be that those who would like to delay childbearing are nonetheless subject to a wide range of pressures from partners, family members, and others—pressures over which program staff have little or no control.

• Members of the two research groups exhibited similar patterns of contraceptive use at the 3½-year interview.

At 3½ years, the two groups were similar in the proportions who reported that they were sexually abstinent (about 19 percent), sexually active and using contraception regularly (about 43 percent), or sexually active but not using contraception regularly (about 28 percent). At that point, over half the sample members were using a prescription method of birth control (birth control pills, Depo-Provera, or Norplant^®) or had had a tubal ligation. The majority of women who reported having had a tubal ligation (13 percent of the sample) had had three or more children.

Most sample members were not fully protected against sexually transmitted diseases. Sixty percent of the women in both groups reported that they had had sex that was not protected against such diseases in the two months preceding the 3½-year interview.

• New Chance did not affect participants' health status.

Women in the experimental and control groups had comparable health-related outcomes at both the 1½-year and the 3½-year points. About half the women in both groups rated their health as very good or excellent, and experimental and control group members were equally likely to report smoking, using drugs, and drinking enough to get high. Fewer than 10 percent of sample members lacked health care coverage, which was generally provided through either Medicaid or private insurance.

• At the 3½-year point, members of the experimental group scored higher on a measure of risk of clinical depression than did their control group counterparts; they were also more likely to report feeling stressed.

As was noted earlier, the young women in the research sample were consistently at risk of depression. Using the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression (CES-D) scale, which indicates risk of a clinical diagnosis of depression, 53 percent of all sample members were at such risk at the time of random assignment, and 43 percent remained at risk 3½ years later. Scores in the control group, however, improved significantly more than those in the experimental group, with the result that the average score for experimental group women was significantly higher than that for women in the control group at the 3½-year point.

In the 3½-year interview, women were also asked how much of the time in the previous month they felt highly stressed. Significantly more women in the experimental group (39 percent) than in the control group (33 percent) reported feeling stressed all or much of the time during the prior month.

Greater instability in living arrangements may help to explain the New Chance program's unexpected negative effects on enrollees' psychological well-being. It also seems plausible that the program raised expectations among participants that their lives would change; their depression scores may have improved less than those of women in the control group because of their failure to realize these expectations. Finally, as is discussed in a later section, mothers in the experimental group assessed their children's behavior less positively than did those in the control group; this fact, too, may be related to, or help account for, greater depression and stress on their part.

Impacts on Employment, Earnings, Welfare Receipt, and Family Income

• Except during the six-month period following random assignment, employment rates for the two groups did not differ.

As Table ES-7 shows, employment rates for both groups increased over time. As expected, women in the control group had higher rates of employment than those in the experimental group during the first six months after random assignment, when the latter were most likely to be active in New Chance. Thereafter, employment patterns did not differ. Similar proportions of both research groups (70 percent of experimental group members and 66 percent of control group members) were employed at some point during the follow-up period, and similar percentages (56 percent of the experimental group members and 55 percent of the control group members) held a full-time job—surprisingly high rates, given the age of the young women and of their children. Finally, similar proportions of both groups (28 percent of the experimental group members and 31 percent of their control group counterparts) were working at the time of the 3½-year follow-up interview.

The average duration of the first job was about six months. Among sample members who had been employed but were not working at follow-up, 64 percent of the respondents said they had resigned from their last job, 18 percent reported that the job was a temporary one that ended, 11 percent were laid off, and 6 percent were fired. Among those who had resigned, the three most commonly cited reasons for doing so were child care (accounting for 18 percent of those who resigned), pregnancy (14 percent), and problems getting along with supervisors and co-workers (14 percent).

• New Chance did not produce increased earnings over the 3½-year follow-up period.

During the first year and a half after random assignment, women in the experimental group,

as expected, earned less than women in the control group; thereafter, however, total earnings were similar for the two groups. (For example, experimental group members earned $3,012 and control group members earned $3,045, on average, during the last year of the follow-up period.) Average hourly wages of sample members who worked were also nearly identical—$5.66 for women in the experimental group and $5.68 for women in the control group during the same period. So were their fringe benefits; roughly one quarter of those who worked had jobs that provided paid sick days, and one fifth had jobs offering a health plan or medical insurance.

It is worth noting that if young mothers worked at $5.67 an hour for 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, their earnings would still leave them more than $1,000 below the 1996 poverty guidelines of $12,980 for a family of three. Coupled with the lack of fringe benefits, such low earnings would leave most of these young mothers without a "safety net," a cash reserve for use in emergencies.

• There is evidence that members of both research groups who received a GED or who participated in skills training and college had higher earnings than they would have had otherwise.

As with the analysis of the relationship between amount of education and GED attainment, analyses of the relationships between earnings and either receipt of a GED or participation in training or college produce findings that are more uncertain than those grounded in experimental/control comparisons. Nonetheless, it appears that participants who obtained a GED or high school diploma had higher earnings than those who did not; this conclusion holds up when measured background differences between GED earners and non-earners are statistically controlled. (Interestingly, greater participation in adult basic education and GED classes by itself did not result in increased earnings unless participants actually obtained a credential.) The largest earnings increases, however, were realized by those taking part in skills training and college. This finding suggests that education credentials are important to earnings because of their "gatekeeper" function; that is, they are frequently a prerequisite for entry into college or programs that offer skills training.

• New Chance had a minimal impact on welfare receipt.

During the first 1½ years after random assignment, women in the experimental group were slightly more likely than women in the control group to receive welfare; thereafter, the two research groups had similar rates of AFDC receipt.

The proportion of sample members on the AFDC rolls declined over time. Forty-seven percent of both experimental and control group members left welfare at some point during the follow-up period, although fewer than half of these remained off welfare for 12 months or more. At the end of the follow-up period, about three quarters of the women in both groups were receiving AFDC.

• There was a wide range of incomes in both experimental and control groups, but no experimental/control difference in the average amount of total family income sample members received.

Sample members were asked about their income and the sources of that income in the month before the 3½-year interview. (This month was often, but not always, the same as the 42nd month of follow-up.) A higher percentage of women in the control group than women in the experimental group (26 versus 23 percent, respectively) reported receiving income from a husband’s or partner's employment, while a slightly higher proportion of women in the experimental group than women in the control group (5 versus 3 percent) reported receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI, federally assisted cash welfare for the disabled, aged, and blind). Otherwise, income sources were virtually identical for the two groups. Approximately one third of the members of both groups reported income from their own earnings, about 70 percent received AFDC, and some 78 percent received food stamps.

While the average income during the month before the 3½-year interview was $1,113 for experimental group members and $1,150 for control group members (a difference that was not statistically significant), there was a good deal of variation around this average. Approximately one quarter of the sample members fell into each of four monthly income categories: less than $600, between $601 and $900, between $901 and $1,500, and more than $1,500. Earnings of partners and spouses constituted a major income source for women in the last category.

Impacts on Parenting, Child Care, and Child Development

• Overall, the children of experimental and control group members were being raised in similar home environments, although New Chance did produce positive impacts for those mothers who were not at risk of depression.

At the time of the first follow-up interview, children in the experimental group were being raised in somewhat more favorable environments than were children of control group members, as indicated by a widely used scale known as the HOME.⁴ This scale measures several aspects of the home environment that have been shown to be related to child development, including the degree of cognitive stimulation the environment provides, the cleanliness and safety of the environment, the mother's degree of emotional support in her interactions with her child, and the mother’s use of harsh discipline. As Table ES-8 shows, at the 3½-year point the positive impact for the experimental group as a whole was no longer evident; experimental and control group members achieved similar HOME scores. Positive effects in the home environment persisted, however, among the subgroup of mothers in the experimental group who were not at risk of depression when they entered the research.

In retrospect, it seems likely that the rather modest number of parenting classes that participants received was inadequate to produce substantial impacts on parenting behavior, especially for those mothers at risk of clinical depression. It may be that these young mothers need more intensive parenting services or an approach that combines mental health services with parenting education. Also, to the extent that the quality of the home environment is shaped by income and other economic factors, the absence of differences between experimental and control group members in these areas may also help to explain the lack of impacts on the home environment measure.

• During the early months of follow-up, the children of experimental group members and those of control group members were exposed to very different child care experiences.

Child care in the New Chance Demonstration was intended both to facilitate the young mothers' participation and to promote the development of their children. As expected, there were marked differences between the child care experiences of experimental and control group children during the first part of the follow-up period. Although most children in the control group (85 percent) were cared for by someone other than their mothers during the first year and a half of follow-up, they were in such care for shorter periods of time and were most likely to be cared for by relatives. In contrast, the children of women in the experimental group were most likely to have attended a day care center or preschool (64 percent of the children chosen as the focus of interview questions for the experimental group versus 31 percent of their control group counterparts) and received care for longer periods of time; they were also more likely to have experienced nonmaternal care by the time they were a year old.

Finally, during the early part of the follow-up period (that is, between random assignment and the 1½-year interview), the children of women in the experimental group experienced a greater number of different child care arrangements: 2.9 different arrangements, as compared with 2.6 arrangements for children of women in the control group, a statistically significant difference.

Between the 1½-year and the 3½-year interviews, children in the two groups had similar child care experiences. Because of pronounced differences during the first year and a half of follow-up, however, at the 3½-year point the proportion of children of control group members who had spent time in a child care center was still considerably smaller than the proportion of experimental group members' children who had done so (51 percent versus 69 percent, respectively).

• Mothers in the experimental group reported a significantly greater amount of parenting-related stress than did mothers in the control group.

A measure of parenting stress was included in both follow-up survey interviews. The two groups of women had similar overall scores at the time of the 1½-year interview, although women in the control group were more likely at that point to have scores reflecting dislike of the parenting role. The situation was different at the second follow-up, however, when mothers in the experimental group registered more parenting-related stress overall than did their control group counterparts. At the 3½-year point, too, experimental group mothers reported higher levels of aggravation in relation to their children than did control group mothers.

• Children of experimental and control group members had similar low scores on a measure of cognitive development.

New Chance did not have an effect on children's cognitive development, as measured by a test that assesses the child's mastery of basic concepts such as colors, letter identification, shapes, and comparisons. Average scores were similar for the children of members of the two groups. They were also low; the average child in both groups was at about the 15th percentile nationally.

• Women in the experimental group rated their children as having more behavior problems than did women in the control group. This impact was concentrated among young women who were at risk of depression at baseline.

Women in the experimental group reported significantly more behavior problems on the part of their children than did their control group counterparts; they also rated their children significantly lower on a scale of positive behavior. These negative impacts were concentrated among women who were at risk of depression at baseline and were registered for both boys and girls who were older than five years old at the 3½-year follow-up, as well as for boys who were under age five. Teachers' ratings of the academic proficiency and behavior of sample members' children provide partial confirmation of the mothers' assessments; the teachers rated the preschool- and school-age daughters (although not the sons) of mothers in the experimental group as presenting more behavior management problems than the daughters of control group women. (The teachers gave similar ratings to the children in the two groups in the area of academic performance.)

A substantial body of literature suggests that depression interferes with good parenting behavior and that inattentive or inconsistent parenting, in turn, leads to behavior problems among children. It seems plausible, therefore, that the greater degree of depression and parenting stress registered by women in the experimental group may account in part for the greater behavioral difficulties reportedly exhibited by their children. The fact that children of mothers in the experimental group experienced more disruption in their early child care experiences than did children of control group mothers may also help to explain the unexpected negative impacts of New Chance in this area.

Findings on Sites and Subgroups

• No site stands out as having done markedly better than the others.

The New Chance sites differed considerably in specific aspects of program implementation (for example, the quality of particular services, whether or not the site provided on-site child care, and the size of the staff) as well as in the environments in which they were located. Therefore, the evaluation sought to determine whether the program was more effective in some locations than in others. The results did not suggest that any particular site, or any group of sites, had more or less favorable impacts than other sites across a range of outcome areas, even when differences in the populations they served were taken into account.

• Young women who had been out of school longer and who were at especially high risk of depression when they entered New Chance experienced adverse outcomes in a number of areas, as did their children.

Previous studies have often found programs to be particularly effective or ineffective for specific subgroups of the research sample—that is, groups of sample members defined on the basis of their characteristics at the time they entered the research sample. Analysis of the findings for subgroups defined in this way does not suggest that any group especially benefited from New Chance.

At the same time, there is evidence that the program had negative effects for two groups of women in the experimental group who at baseline were more disadvantaged than other program enrollees—and negative effects for their children as well. First, women in the experimental group who at random assignment had been out of school for more than two years registered greater risk of depression at the 3½-year point than comparable women in the control group; they also reported higher levels of parenting stress, and they rated their children as exhibiting more behavior problems. Second, experimental group women who were at high risk of depression at random assignment stayed at a higher risk of depression than their control group counterparts at the 3½-year point and also reported a higher degree of parenting stress; their children demonstrated lower cognitive functioning and were rated by their mothers as having more behavior problems.

These findings suggest that young women at higher risk of depression and young women who have been out of school for an extended period need a very different treatment from the one provided by New Chance, especially because their children appear to be particularly at risk of negative outcomes. This possibility is discussed at greater length below.

Implications for Program Operations

The New Chance findings indicate that intensive receipt of education and training services made for better outcomes. Since services are important, the key issue is how to ensure better service delivery and take-up. The key features of New Chance—comprehensive services delivered on site and supported by intensive (and relatively costly) case management—did not ensure a level of service receipt that resulted in better outcomes for experimental group members and their children than for their counterparts in the control group.

It is reasonable to speculate whether New Chance would have been more effective had it been mandatory. Program coordinators, when interviewed, held differing opinions on the topic. The records of mandatory interventions for teenage mothers who were not in school at the outset of the intervention have not been promising; such interventions have also been ineffective in increasing self-sufficiency for this population.

The New Chance experience does offer clues about some measures that may promote more effective service delivery:

• Conserving resources to ensure consistent follow-up of enrollees who are in off-site activities or are employed. Programs may wish to make one or more staff members specifically responsible for following up with and helping to resolve problems confronting participants in off-site activities, including employment.

• Improving family planning services. The unsuccessful record of New Chance and other demonstration programs in reducing rates of repeat pregnancy and childbearing among young women who are already mothers suggests that programs face a daunting challenge in achieving behavior change in this area. Programs would do well, however, to make available and encourage the use of longer-acting contraceptives, such as Norplant® and Depo-Provera.

• Responding to mental health and other personal problems. Program staff need to be aware of the high risk of depression in this population, of the debilitating effects of this mental health problem, and of resources for treatment, including medication when appropriate. They also should be familiar with community resources for treating substance abuse, helping domestic violence victims, and dealing with other problems.

• Ensuring continuity of child care. Frequent changes in child care arrangements are likely to have harmful effects on children. Program staff should help participants make child care arrangements that will be flexible enough to accommodate the mothers’ needs as they move through various phases of the program and into subsequent employment.

It is worth noting that not all these measures entail additional resources; they might be put in place, rather, by redirecting resources toward somewhat different goals and means.

At the same time, it is worth experimenting with (or further refining) other, very different program models. While it is beyond the scope of this report to spell out these models, they might include further expansion of home visitor programs (see Olds, 1988), approaches that try to do only one or two things (such as education or parenting) but to do them intensely and extremely well, approaches that emphasize youth development and empowerment, and approaches that reach young mothers in the context of broader community development efforts.

Finally, while it may be politically unpopular or even infeasible to not require young mothers on welfare to do anything outside the home, it appears worthwhile, from a knowledge development standpoint at least, to test the notion that society's resources would be better expended on these women once they have attained a greater degree of personal stability and maturity. In the meantime, attention could focus on supporting the growth and development of their children. This issue, of course, reaches beyond the implications for program operations and into the arena of policy.

Implications for Policy

The New Chance experience provides few definitive answers about what should be done. It does, however, raise critical questions about the directions and consequences of public policy.

Implications for Welfare Policy. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 gives states extraordinary leeway to design their own welfare programs within broad guidelines established by the law. New Chance was put in place in an environment quite different from the one that is likely to exist once the provisions of the new law are fully implemented. In particular, research sample members were not subject to time limits on their receipt of welfare; in contrast, the Act prohibits states from using federal funds to provide assistance grants to most families that have been on welfare for five years, and states can set much lower time limits if they choose. Despite such differences, the New Chance results have important implications for the design and implementation of the new state initiatives.

First, the 1996 legislation requires young mothers on welfare who are under age 19 to attend high school or an alternative program if they do not already have a diploma or a GED. In fact, high percentages of both experimental and control group members in New Chance did attend education classes. The problem was less their lack of initial effort than the lack of consistent and continuous participation, caused in part by lack of motivation but in part, too, by homelessness, domestic violence, child care and transportation problems, illnesses, and other problems not within participants' (or a program’s) control. Policy makers will need to consider what supports young mothers need in order to participate regularly, as well as what circumstances warrant deferrals or exemptions from required activities.

The cost of child care is another factor policy makers will need to bear in mind in imposing participation requirements on young mothers. The data suggest that if welfare-to-work programs make a full effort to engage young mothers, providing care for their children would be expensive, given the large proportion of young mothers with children under age one and the high cost of infant care.

In a related vein, the findings suggest that policy makers will need to decide how to respond when former recipients lose their jobs. Although rates of job-holding in the New Chance sample were surprisingly high, so too were rates of rapid job loss, occasioned by pregnancy, the lack of good child care, conflicts with supervisors, transportation problems, and other factors. If high rates of job turnover remain the norm in the future, policy makers will need to weigh possible responses to this situation. One possibility would be to implement initiatives designed to help former recipients get new jobs as quickly as possible; another would be to have welfare case managers follow up on former recipients who move into employment to try to identify and deal with problems that can ultimately result in job loss.

With regard to time limits themselves, the territory is virtually uncharted. Time limits may lend greater urgency to recipients' efforts to attain self-sufficiency. The fact that three quarters of New Chance experimental and control group members remained on welfare after three and one half years, however, raises serious doubts about the ability of a large proportion of young mothers to attain self-sufficiency within a short time. The findings suggest that the shorter the time limits, the greater the number of recipients who will continue to need assistance once the time limit is reached—an important consideration when only 20 percent of the caseload can be exempted from the time limit.

Under the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, states have the option of denying benefits for additional children born after mothers have begun to receive assistance. The results of New Chance and other demonstrations suggest the difficulty of modifying fertility-related behaviors. Whether "family caps" would succeed in this regard is very much an open question.

Indeed, the vision that appears to underlie the new legislation is that welfare recipients will act out of economic rationality—that they will exercise free choice and respond appropriately to the financial incentives built into the new laws and regulations. The New Chance data suggest that this is an overly simple view. While some young women may be prompted to move more quickly toward self-sufficiency, others are likely to be held back by depression (especially if it is undiagnosed and untreated), by the lack of supportive figures in their lives, and by other factors that constrain both choice and opportunity. In this event, they may be left with neither welfare nor work. If so, their children will encounter the negative developmental consequences of growing up in even deeper poverty than they normally experience on welfare.

Interventions Beyond the Welfare System. The New Chance results also indicate the need for public policies that move beyond the scope of the welfare system to enhance young mothers' efforts to become self-sufficient. The findings suggest that while they are still young, many mothers will not be able to find jobs that enable them to escape poverty; nor will the jobs they do find offer health insurance and the other fringe benefits that constitute a "safety net" that keeps people from slipping back into acute need. Whether or not marriage is a desirable solution, the experience of research sample members suggests that it is an undependable one, in part because disadvantaged men often face the same unstable labor market prospects as their female counterparts.

These realities suggest the need for income support policies outside the welfare system: income supplementation (for example, through the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income households), extended Medicaid or another form of health insurance, and low-cost child care. Such policies shore up earnings and reward work effort; they also have the potential to lift families out of poverty.

The difficulty of effecting change in the behavior of young mothers—especially those who are school dropouts—through the provision of services above and beyond those that are already available suggests that policy makers may want to direct more attention toward other, related concerns. First, more consideration needs to be given to identifying and promoting effective strategies for delaying first pregnancies among teens. A second priority should be to assist the development of children growing up in poverty. The fact that children of New Chance sample members had preschool readiness scores placing them at only the 15th percentile nationwide suggests that, without intervention, these children may be prime candidates for poor academic performance, school dropout, premature parenthood, and unemployment.

Finally, it seems important to test public policy initiatives that are focused less on remediating the skills of individuals than on increasing economic opportunity more generally. Early childbearing and negative developmental prognoses for children arise in a context forged by poverty. Interventions that are focused on individuals often deal with the low skill levels and motivational issues that contribute to poverty. They do not, however, address the larger social forces that create poverty: the disappearance of decent-paying jobs for relatively low-skilled people, the special shortage of such jobs in low-income communities, the continuing effects of discrimination, the social isolation and lack of support in the workplace. It may be that programs focused on individuals would be more effective if they were embedded in, or accompanied by, more ambitious initiatives that seek change on the societal as well as the individual level.

Notes:

1.  Prior to the 1996 federal welfare legislation, Aid to Families with Dependent Children was the nation's largest cash welfare program. The legislation radically altered the structure of federal welfare by replacing open-ended federal matching funds for public assistance grants with block grants to states that the states can use for cash grants to needy households and for other purposes. The legislation sets a five-year time limit on the amount of time for which most adults can receive federal assistance dollars; states can exempt up to 20 percent of the assistance caseload from this time limit but can also impose shorter time limits if they so choose.

2.  Like most interventions that focus on individual participants, New Chance sought to help enrollees understand and cope with the larger world, not to change the larger social, economic, and political environments in which the young women and their children lived.

3.  In all, 2,322 young women were randomly assigned, 1,553 to the experimental group and 769 to the control group. Although not all of them could be located or were willing to take part in the follow-up surveys, the response rates were very high for such research: 91.4 percent of the members of the experimental group and 89.2 percent of the members of the control group took part in the 3½-year interviews.
In addition to the follow-up surveys of research sample members, the report draws on data from several sources: the New Chance Management Information System (MIS), which contains the most detailed source of information on experimental group members' activities while they were in the program, a mail questionnaire completed by the preschool and regular school teachers of sample members' children, interviews with program coordinators and other key personnel concerning program operations, site visit reports completed by MDRC staff members, and data collected for the analysis of the program’s costs.

4.  A special study of parenting behavior carried out about 22 months after random assignment that relied upon direct observation of mother-child interactions rather than interview measures confirmed and extended these positive results for a selected (but statistically nonrepresentative) set of families at a set of New Chance sites. See Zaslow and Eldred (eds.), forthcoming.