Fighting for Reliable Evidence

Chapter 5: The Reagan Revolution and Research Capacity Within the Department of Health and Human Services: From Near Destruction to New Growth

CHAPTER 5 The Reagan Revolution and Research Capacity Within the Department of Health and Human Services: From Near Destruction to New Growth* When I was introduced to the idea [of random assignment] with the [Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment] hearing, it made a lot of sense to me. Then I learned a lot more about the intricacies of research designs when I was at OFA and [later] ACF and how comparison designs don’t necessarily work, so during that time I became a true believer in the power that getting that kind of information can have. —Jo Anne Barnhart1 When Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had already played a substantial role in what was then the relatively brief history of social experiments. Although the first such experiments were initiated by the Office of Economic Opportunity, through the 1970s HHS had initiated and supervised the operation of several negativeincome -tax experiments, participated in the Supported Work demonstration, and been responsible for what is arguably the most policy-influential single social experiment ever conducted—the RAND Health Insurance Experiment .2 The HHS expertise that developed from this experience was housed in *Chapter 5 authored by Howard Rolston. 142 FIGHTING FOR RELIABLE EVIDENCE the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE). When the Reagan administration took over, the new negative attitude toward policy research led fairly quickly to the radical reduction (through layoffs and resignations) of much of the staff (in the Department of Labor as well as ASPE) who had fostered and learned from these experiments. In this chapter, I relate how the events described in chapter 4 appeared from inside the Reagan administration. I write from the vantage point of a career civil servant who was relatively insulated from the firestorm Judy describes and was lucky enough to play a growing role as part of a cadre of both career and political appointees who worked together over many years to make random assignment the standard for policy and program evaluation. Table 5.1 sketches the chronology of my major moves within HHS over my two and a half decades there. By 1980 I was already at HHS, tucked away in a small corner of the Social Security Administration (SSA), the Office of Family Assistance (OFA), whose main responsibility was operating the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program at the federal level. Although these earlier experiments were known in OFA, and to me, certainly no expertise existed there in the design or management of social experiments. By the end of the 1980s, however, much would be changed. My office (by Table 5.1 Institutional Home of Howard Rolston Within HHS, 1978 to 2004 Date Event 1978–1980 Welfare Reform Planning Group, Social Security Administration 1980–1986 Office of Family Assistance, Social Security Administration —State Data and Program Characteristics Branch, 1980–1981 —Division of Research, Evaluation, and Statistics, 1981–1985 —Office of Policy and Evaluation, 1985–1986 1986–1991 Office of Policy and Evaluation, Family Support Administration 1991–1995 Office of Policy and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families 1995–2004 Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families Source: Author’s compilation. REAGAN REVOLUTION AND RESEARCH CAPACITY WITHIN HHS 143 that time I was in the Office of Policy and Evaluation in the Family Support Administration, since a reorganization had taken place in HHS) would include a staff with substantial experience designing, initiating, managing, and partnering with other organizations on large-scale social experiments. By the end of the 1990s my office—now in the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation in the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), through yet another reorganization at HHS—would be the leading force for social experiments in the federal government, having designed, initiated, funded, and overseen dozens of experiments, primarily in welfare policy. This chapter relates the early part of this story. It describes how my office and I became involved with experiments and how our capacity grew. We made significant mistakes in the process, but we also learned how to do things more effectively and take on bigger and more important projects. It is paradoxical that this new policy research capacity should have begun to grow during the very period when the Reagan administration was radically reducing the strong capacity that had been built in the 1970s in ASPE, another part of the same...