Statistics and Policy in Welfare Quality Control: A Basis for Understanding and Assessing Competing Views
Abstract Designing quality control (QC) systems in public welfare programs exposes competing policy interests. Statistical design choices are not exclusively technical choices. Rather, they balance competing interests in assigning and collecting penalties and can influence how the programs themselves are run and to what ends. Thus the recent controversy around the application of financial penalties for overpayments in the nation's three family assistance programs joins statistical issues with deeper public policy concerns. This article describes the policy context in which the statistical issues are raised and the design, measurement, and estimation questions that expose competing policy interests. It describes the administration of the family assistance programs, the operation and limitations of their QC systems for addressing problems of administration, the statistical and policy issues inherent in the major QC design questions, and National Academy of Sciences and federal study findings and recent legi...