Studies of the characteristics of AFDC recipients

Recently the Social Security Administration was given responsibility for the administration of the aid to families with dependent children (AFDC) program. The major source of national data describing AFDC recipients is a series of studies of the families that receive payments under the program. Eleven such studies have been conducted on an intermittent basis since the program began in 1936. The surveys have been made biennially since 1967 and have resulted in microdata files available for analytical purposes. Results of the study conducted for the May 1975 caseload indicate that AFDC families are becoming smaller, shifting from bigger cities to smaller ones, are likely to be headed by a woman, and are more likely to be white than black.