blank reports in her analysis of afdcreceipt in denver and seattle that of the completed spells for a household ended within a year with an average duration of benefit payments of months she however does not include the of rightcensored spells in these calculations which generally have a longer duration until censoring fitzgerald calculates a much longer median afdc benefit spell length of months over a shorter observation period months but calculates a median spell duration of months for receipt of afdc and food stamps in a followup study fitzgerald also hoynes reports longer afdc spell lengths for california where of spells end within months and end within months