IPR - Institute for Policy Research - Northwestern University

Child, Adolescent, and family studies
them,” Lewis says. “Our goal is to point to a fresher
way of tackling the problems of poverty in our society.”
Northern Illinois Press will publish the book in 2009.
Lewis is starting a new project with IPR graduate
research assistant Lindsay Monte using IFS data to look
at the links between welfare receipt, financial hardship,
and crime. While many have examined the effects of
the reform on work, well-being, health, and economic
stability, the effects
of welfare reform
on the criminal
behavior of welfare
recipients is still
unknown. As
state welfare rolls
have declined
significantly in
the years since
Dan A. Lewis (l.) reviews the Illinois Families
Study at a state poverty summit on
welfare reform,
a panel with Rev. Walter Johnson Jr. female criminality
has been on the
rise. Previous IFS findings have shown that the 1996
reform increased neither the number of jobs available
nor the wages they paid, but did, with its “work-first”
philosophy, increase the number of women competing
for positions. With funding from the Joyce Foundation,
Lewis and Monte will examine whether denying women
cash benefits increased criminal activity.
IFS received funding from the Department of
Education, NICHD, Administration for Children and
Families, Chicago Community Trust, and the Joyce,
MacArthur, and Polk Bros. foundations.
< Racial Disproportionality of Child Welfare
Law professor Dorothy Roberts, Kirkland & Ellis
Professor, published research on the community-level
effects of the disproportionate number of African
American children in child welfare systems. From her
in-depth interviews of black women in Woodlawn, a
mostly black Chicago neighborhood with high rates
of foster-care placement, Roberts concludes that the
residents of such neighborhoods must increasingly
rely on child protection agencies for needed financial
assistance due to the growing dearth of social
programs in these neighborhoods. Roberts explores
the implications of these findings for a new research
paradigm to address racial disproportionality and to
understand the impact and role of child welfare agencies
in African American neighborhoods.
< Economics of Adoption
Adoption, as an alternative to childbearing, is a widely
accepted means of forming a family in many modern
societies. In this study, economist Éva Nagypál and
her colleagues provide a comprehensive overview of the
U.S. adoption market and its historical development.
They describe three different adoption markets,
document trends in these markets using aggregate-level
data from 1951 to 2002, and explore possible reasons
for observed historical patterns. In addition, with data
from the National Survey of Family Growth and the
Survey of Income and Program Participation, they
conduct the first econometric analysis of the adoption
market by estimating individuals’ propensities to adopt
or to relinquish a child for adoption.
< Northwestern Juvenile Project
Social psychologist Linda Teplin leads the
Northwestern Juvenile Project, the first large-scale
longitudinal study of health needs and outcomes of
delinquent youth. Launched in 1995, the pioneering
project tracks and interviews 1,829 participants to
examine their ongoing health needs and their life
trajectories. The group is investigating the relationship
among substance abuse, mental disorders, and HIV/
AIDS risk behaviors and infection from adolescence
through young adulthood.
A recent finding shows that males, African Americans,
Hispanics, and older youth were more likely to
be processed in adult criminal courts than females,
non-Hispanic whites, and younger children. Of those
transferred to adult courts, 68 percent had at least one
psychiatric disorder and 43 percent had two or more.
Teplin and her colleagues called for the provision of
psychiatric services to these youth, including those sentenced
to prison, and to take into account the disproportionate
number of racial-ethnic minority groups.
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