Most of the indicators in Chapter II are shown by age categories, generally children ages 0 to 15, adults ages 16 to 64, and adults 65 and older. Youth 16, 17 and 18 years of age are often classified with adults because they are considered potential members of the labor force in many labor force statistics. Indicators based on program administrative data (Indicator 3) and many of the risk factors presented in Chapter III, however, use published data that generally define “children” to include all individuals less than 18 years of age.
Race and Ethnicity
Most of the data sources allow analysis of the indicators and predictors of welfare dependence across several racial/ethnic categories. Where the data are available, statistics are shown for three racial/ethnic groups – Non-Hispanic White, Non-Hispanic Black and Hispanic. Due to small sample size, American Indians/Alaska Natives, Asians and Native Hawaiians/Other Pacific Islanders are included in the totals for all persons but are not shown under separate race categories. In some instances, however, data are shown for “Whites” and “Blacks,” rather than for “Non-Hispanic Whites” and “Non-Hispanic Blacks;” in such cases these racial categories include individuals of Hispanic Origin. Footnotes to the tables provide further documentation of issues related to race and ethnicity.
Estimates based on 2002 (and more recent) Current Population Survey (CPS) and Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) data are affected by a change in the survey questionnaire that allows individuals to report one or more races. This change was implemented to comply with the 1997 Standards for Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity. In 2000, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) published guidelines for implementing these new standards. To accommodate the race categories under the new standards, CPS and SIPP estimates for racial/ethnic categories beginning in 2002 are for persons who are Non-Hispanic White (and no other race), Non-Hispanic Black (and no other race) and Hispanic (of any race). Persons who reported more than one race are included in the total for all persons but are not shown under any race category.
Family Structure Categories
For the primary measure of dependency, as well as selected indicators and many of our risk factor measures, estimates are provided for individual persons by family structure (see SUM 1, Indicator 1, Indicator 2, Indicator 5, ECON 3, ECON 7, and WORK 1). For these measures, the entire population is subdivided into the following four groups:
- Persons in Married-Couple Families
- Persons in Female-Headed Families
- Persons in Male-Headed Families
- Unrelated Persons.
Two additional measures use a subset of the above categories (see Indicator 4, and ECON 1).
Annual and Monthly Measures
There are differences between monthly and annual observation of benefit receipt. The measures of annual recipiency (that is, any receipt over the course of a year) shown in Figure and Table SUM 1 are higher than the more traditional measures of recipiency in an average month, as shown in several other indicators and in Appendix A. The annual recipiency measures in Figure and Table SUM 1 are not only higher because they include any receipt from at least one of three welfare programs (while average monthly administrative data focus on receipt from only one program), they also are higher because they capture program receipt received in as little as one month during a given year, whereas average monthly recipiency rates, by definition, average across all the months in a given year.
Our key measure of dependency for the report, following the Advisory Board’s proposal, also measures the level of benefit receipt among AFDC/TANF, SNAP and SSI on an annual basis (see Figure and Table SUM1 and Indicator 1), as does our long term AFDC/TANF receipt measure (Indicator 9). These measures capture any benefit receipt during the year, which differs from several other “annual” indicators in Chapter I that present average monthly estimates for each given year (see Indicators 2, 3, 4 and 5).
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