First Steps Database: Birth Rates after Welfare Reform

This study presents the trend in birth rates after welfare reform. The study finds that birth rates for Washington women on welfare decreased by nearly 30 percent from Fiscal Year 1994 to Fiscal Year 2000. During the same time period, birth rates for higher income women in Washington remained stable. The trend of decreasing birth rates for women on welfare began before welfare reform was implemented in July 1997. Without the efforts begun in the early 1990s to bring family planning into Community Services Offices and to increase access to these services for low-income women, it is unlikely that such a large change in birth rates would have occurred after welfare reform.