What Happens When TANF Leavers Lose Their Jobs?

SOLE SOURCE The Government is seeking to award a contract pursuant to project HS-10-015, - What Happens When TANF Leavers Lose Their Jobs?, and wishes to award this project as a sole source contract to the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research under the authority of 41 U.S. C. 253 (c) (1) as implemented by FAR 6.302-1. This project will examine the use of Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits by Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) leavers who have subsequently experienced a job loss, the link between UI benefit and TANF recidivism, and the relationship among state-level trends in TANF caseloads, UI claimants, and unemployment. Analyses will utilize a unique data set maintained within the Administrative Data Research and Evaluation (ADARE) consortium, a partnership of employment security agencies and affiliated universities or research institutes in nine states, one of which is the Upjohn Institute. While it is likely that UI benefits are becoming an increasingly important source of support among TANF leavers, the occurrence of a TANF exit followed by job loss and UI benefit receipt is still too infrequent to be adequately captured in survey data. Thus, administrative records are necessary to examine the research questions posed in this project. Unfortunately, the administrative data available to examine this topic are highly limited. This is because records on UI benefits are not maintained at the national level, nor routinely merged with TANF records at the state level. The only data currently available that provide linked administrative records on TANF and UI benefit outcomes across multiple states is that maintained by ADARE. These data are maintained by the employment security agencies within each partner state and are not publicly available, nor can they be analyzed by anyone outside of ADARE. The technical effort needed to link files both across programmatic systems and across time was extensive, as were the legal and procedural efforts needed to facilitate the data sharing among programs and among states. Therefore, it would be infeasible for any other entity to create a consortium offering similar data in a time frame reasonable for undertaking this project. Within the ADARE consortium, each partner has been assigned the lead on a particular set of issues and associated data. The W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research is the partner assigned the lead on UI benefits data and related analyses, as agreed upon by the U.S. Department of Labor and the other ADARE partners. Upjohn has performed several analyses of these data already. ASPE previously funded a study using the data from the ADARE consortium, examining actual UI application and receipt among current and former TANF participants. Those results were extremely useful in beginning to address these topics. The present study builds on the previous work and extends it to new states and new research and policy questions.