Work or welfare? Assessing the impacts of recent employment and policy changes on very young children

We explore the implications of the rapid influx of low-income mothers into the workforce and PRWORA work requirements during the middle to late 1990s for the well-being of young children. Our premise is that some families wit h young children will be better off, while others will be worse off than lo w-income cohorts from a decade ago. We focus on six policy provisions from the 1990s that are likely to influence the well-being of young, low-income children in the coming decades: (a) work requirements for mothers of young children; (b) education requirements for teenage mothers of young children; (c) child care subsidies; (d) child care regulations; (e) family leave; an d (f) the Earned Income Tax Credit. For each of these provisions, we discus s the actual policy as well as the implementation (i.e. practice) of the po licy at the state level. We then consider what policy-relevant research has to say about the possible impact of early maternal employment, income, and child care on young children, highlighting research on low-income families where possible. Much of the research we review is based on data collected prior to the rapid changes in the proportion of low-income mothers in the w orkforce and in state and federal requirements and programs that occurred i n the mid-1990s. Thus, we conclude with speculations on how the current tre nds in workforce participation and welfare and other policies may impact yo ung children in the coming decades. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All righ ts reserved.