This article shows how and why interactions among sociological, statistical, and public policy
issues fuel the current debate about the quality control systems of three family assistance
programs: Food Stamps, AFDC (Aid to Families With Dependent Children), and Medicaid.
These interactions will be seen to be driven by social policies that in turn will impinge on issues
of estimation, measurement error, detection of outliers, and the implied cost share sanctioning
of states by the federal government. The authors' conclusions are related to, and extend, the results of a National Academy of Sciences study of methods for improving the current quality
control systems.
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