BOCYF Projects

The Evaluation of Food Assistance Programs in an Era of Welfare Reform

Publications: Evaluating Food Assistance Programs in an Era of Welfare Reform: Summary of a Workshop (1999)

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, also known as the welfare reform act, introduced major changes to the U.S. social policy of public assistance benefits. The act retained food stamps as a federal entitlement program but reduced welfare benefits, restricted benefits to legal immigrants, and imposed work requirements on able-bodied adults without dependents. With such major changes to these programs, the consequences for the current population of recipients and their children are expected to be extensive. To continue to meet the nutritional requirements of those in need will necessitate the identification, monitoring, and evaluation of the effects of these changes.

At the request of the Economic Research Service, the Board on Children, Youth, and Families, the Committee on National Statistics of the National Research Council, and the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine convened a one-and-a-half-day workshop on February 12-13, 1998, to discuss evaluation of food assistance programs in an era of welfare reform. Participants were drawn from the areas of program evaluation, policy analysis, survey methods, food assistance, nutrition, child nutrition and child development, outcome measurement, and state social service programs.

The workshop had five main goals:

A report, Evaluating Food Assistance Programs in an Era of Welfare Reform: Summary of a Workshop, was released in June 1999.