Content by Keyword: Employment/Self-Sufficiency

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

Welfare reform is often seen as a tool that can be used to do much more than raise earnings and reduce dependence on government assistance. FSA, for example, sought to bring about a sea change in people's attitudes toward welfare receipt. Some policymakers believe that reducing welfare use will have positive spillover effects on poor families, suc

5   In these sites, the starting of the welfare time-limit clock necessitated allowing control group members to access welfare-to-work program services.

The NEWWS findings should not be taken as a general indictment of the benefits of education and training in welfare-to-work programs.

Evaluations of welfare-to-work programs operated before FSA's passage found that the programs were most effective for the moderately disadvantaged and least effective for the most disadvantaged and the least disadvantaged (to learn how these groups were defined in NEWWS, read the first finding below).