Content by Keyword: Employment/Self-Sufficiency

The cash transfer treatment tested in SIME/DIME, as in the previous income maintenance experiments, consisted of a series of negative income tax plans.  A negative income tax is simply a cash transfer program in which there is (a) a maximum benefit (called the guarantee) for which a family is eligible if it has no other income and (b) a rate (cal

SIME/DIME was launched in Seattle, Washington, in 1970 and extended in 1972 to a second site in Denver, Colorado.  The prime contractors for SIME/DIME were the States of Washington and Colorado, which subcontracted with SIR International for the design, operation, and research evaluation of the experiment.  SRI International, in turn, subcontrac

We have been discussing random assignment of treatment to subjects in an experimental study.  One "treatment" that is frequently tested is no treatment at all, in order words the "control" treatment.  Families or individuals enrolled in the control group are not eligible for any special benefit or services, but provide the same information to th

Other things equal, the larger the sample size, the greater the ability of an experiment to detect treatment effects and the greater the statistical confidence that can be placed in the findings.  Having a larger sample size than all the other income maintenance experiments combined, SIME/DIME produced the results to which one could attach the gr

Given a will-defined treatment, an expected effect, and an expected cause-effect mechanism, the next step is to design an experiment that will clarify the cause-effect relationship.  Developing such a design is complex.  The basic aim, however, is straightforward; to introduce deliberate and systematic variations in the strength of the treatment

In order to test whether something is the cause of something else, it is important not only to define the treatment and the hypothesized effect clearly and unambiguously, but also to be able to spell out the logic of the mechanism connecting the treatment to the hypothesized effect.  If the issue of policy interest cannot be given prior shape in

A social experiment is a field test of one or more social programs — or, to use the phraseology of the natural sciences, a test of one or more "treatments."  A social experiment is a field test in the sense that families or individuals are actually enrolled in a pilot social program offering some type of special benefit or service.  It is "ex

In the mid 1960s, a consensus emerged among policy analysts and that there were potential problems with the existing set of transfer programs available to those in need.  Programs were believed to be fragmented and characterized by variations in benefit levels and administrative access among different types of families.  In particular, the worki

The Seattle-Denver Income Maintenance Experiment (SIME/DIME) was the last in a series of four, large-scale income maintenance experiments undertaken in the late 1960s and early 1970s to measure the disincentive effects of cash transfers on the market work of those eligible for them. The purpose of the summary is to provide an overview of the rat

Appendix Table. Summary of NEWWS Program Activities, Environments, and Results Program Activities Sample and Site Characteristics Five-Year Net Cost per Program Group Member ($) Year Control Group Impact SOURCES:   Hamilton et al., 2001; Michalopoulos and Schwartz, 2001.

The Family Support Act of 1988 sent a strong signal to states and localities — a signal that was amplified in the 1996 welfare reform law — that it was important to move people from welfare to work. States responded by developing welfare-to-work programs that were more complex, offered a wider spectrum of services, were implemented on a broa

The programs' five-year benefits were also calculated in NEWWS. Benefits included the increases in earnings and decreases in welfare and food stamp payments discussed earlier, as well as dollar valuations of the programs' estimated effects on Medicaid, job fringe benefits, taxes paid, and the costs of administering transfer programs such as food s

Different types of five-year costs were estimated for the NEWWS programs. The gross cost per program group member is a comprehensive measure of all the costs associated with providing employment services and related support services to people while they were enrolled in a welfare-to-work program as well as after they left the program and/or the

FSA pushed administrators to operate more complex welfare-to-work programs, involve a larger share of the caseload (including the most disadvantaged), and provide more intensive and expanded services -- changes that were likely to increase the costs of the programs relative to those of programs operated in the early to mid-1980s.

Participation mandates in welfare-to-work programs are intended to change welfare recipients' perceptions and behavior in several ways. First, they send the message that receipt of welfare is not an unconditional entitlement. Second, owing to the time investment required by program activities, they reduce the perceived value of welfare grants rela

Despite the fact that participation in welfare-to-work activities is generally required in exchange for welfare receipt, welfare agencies often have a difficult time engaging a large share of their caseloads in program activities. Reacting in part to low participation rates in welfare-to-work programs, FSA broke new ground in requiring states to e

As mentioned in the description of the NEWWS programs operated in Columbus, there are two general approaches to welfare case management: traditional and integrated. Although each can be argued to have advantages and disadvantages, some policymakers and program operators have speculated that integrating the roles of income maintenance and employmen

The administrators of all the welfare-to-work programs studied in NEWWS hoped that their programs' preemployment services, mandates, and messages would enable welfare recipients eventually to increase their income and move out of poverty, but their relative emphasis on and methods of achieving this goal differed. The education-focused programs emp

During the two decades before FSA's passage, mothers receiving welfare who had children under age 6 were generally not subject to the participation and work requirements of welfare-to-work programs. With FSA's passage came the advent of mandatory participation in welfare-to-work activities for mothers with young children. Because the new mandate's