This study assesses the impact of South Carolina’s Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, Family Independence (FI), on the longitudinal earnings of three cohorts of new entrants who entered the study before, at the beginning of, and at the height of the 2007-2009 recession. Applicants who began the application process but did not enroll in TANF were propensity-score matched to entrants by background characteristics including pre-intervention earnings history, and served as the comparison group. We constructed a latent growth curve model to test whether earnings histories were similar for the program and comparison groups up until FI intake, to estimate program impact by comparing post-intake earnings of program participants to those of the comparison group, and to determine the statistical significance of cohort differences in program impact. The findings showed FI had a positive impact on the earnings of participants before the recession. The effect became weaker during the state’s period of rising unemployment, and disappeared during the worst economic recession in decades. This study demonstrates the usefulness of longitudinal administrative data, propensity score matching, and latent growth modeling techniques for evaluating the impact of program interventions.

中文翻译：

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南卡罗来纳州的 TANF 计划对经济大衰退之前和期间新进入者收入的影响

本研究评估了南卡罗来纳州的贫困家庭临时援助 (TANF) 计划、家庭独立 (FI) 对三组新进入者的纵向收入的影响，这些新进入者在研究之前、开始时和高峰期进入了研究。 2007-2009 年的经济衰退。开始申请程序但未参加 TANF 的申请人通过包括干预前收入历史在内的背景特征与进入者进行倾向得分匹配，并作为对照组。我们构建了一个潜在增长曲线模型来测试项目和对照组在 FI 摄入前的收入历史是否相似，通过比较项目参与者与对照组的摄入后收入来估计项目影响，并确定计划影响的队列差异的统计显着性。调查结果表明，金融危机对经济衰退前参与者的收入产生了积极影响。在该州失业率上升的时期，这种影响变得更弱，在几十年来最严重的经济衰退期间消失了。这项研究证明了纵向管理数据、倾向得分匹配和潜在增长建模技术在评估项目干预影响方面的有用性。