Empirical studies of the determinants and consequences of college enrollment and graduation
among welfare recipients are in surprisingly short supply. In this study I use data from the National
Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY)–a survey that follows a sample of young people annually
from 1979 to 1998–to study the welfare and college trajectories followed by young women, including
how college attendance relates to welfare recipients’ time on aid over a 20-year period. The NLSY
covers a period largely unaffected by TANF’s regulations. This is advantageous for two reasons.
First, evidence suggests that welfare recipients' postsecondary enrollments have begun to fall since
PRWORA enactment (Cox and Spriggs 2002; Jacobs and Winslow 2003). When enrolled, welfare
recipients have become less likely than others to enroll in degree-granting postsecondary programs,
opting instead for shorter-term vocational certificate programs (Jacobs and Winslow 2003). With the
reductions and shifts in enrollment that are thought to be associated with TANF's educational
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constraints, it may not be possible to understand the determinants and consequences of postsecondary
education for welfare recipients in the TANF era. Second, the long time period of the NLSY allows
me to examine multiple spells of college and welfare and to track graduation and time on aid over a
sufficiently long time frame.