This study analyzes determinants of entry and exit transitions in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. The principal findings are that state-controlled policy parameters such as the AFDC "guarantee" (the payment received when...

This paper presents new measures of the implicit marginal tax rate on earnings in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program. Previous measures suffer from two types of bias. First, they do not adequately control for nonlinear relationships between AFDC payments and earnings....

This paper analyzes the relationship between AFDC benefits and a single mother's propensity to reside in a subfamily-i.e., within another family rather than in her own independent household. We find that some states pay lower benefits to mothers living in subfamilies. In those states, a single...