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Policy Framework
The federal welfare overhaul of 1996 ushered in myriad policy changes aimed at getting low-income parents off public assistance and into employment. These changes — especially cash welfare’s transformation from an entitlement into a time-limited benefit contingent on work participation — have intensified the need to help low-income families become economically self-sufficient and remain so in the long term. Although a fair amount is known about how to help welfare recipients prepare for and find jobs in the first place, the Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) project is the most comprehensive effort thus far to discover what approaches help welfare recipients and other low-income people stay steadily employed and advance in their jobs.
Agenda, Scope, and Goals
Launched in 1999 and slated to end in 2009, the ERA project encompasses more than a dozen demonstration programs and uses a rigorous research design to analyze the implementation and impacts of each one. With technical assistance from MDRC and The Lewin Group, most of the programs were designed specifically for the purposes of evaluation, in some cases building on prior initiatives. Because the programs’ aims and target populations vary, so do the services they provide:
- Advancement programs focus on helping low-income workers move into better jobs by offering services such as career counseling and education and training.
- Placement and retention programs aim to help participants, mostly “hard-to-employ” people such as welfare recipients with disabilities or substance abuse problems, to find and hold jobs.
- “Mixed goals” programs, targeted primarily at welfare recipients who are searching for jobs, focus on job placement, retention, and advancement in that order.
The project’s evaluation component investigates each program in the following areas:
- Implementation. What services are provided, how are they delivered, who receives them, and how are problems addressed?
- Impacts. To what extent does the program improve employment retention, advancement, and other key outcomes? Looking across programs, which approaches are most effective, and for whom?
In addition, for selected programs, costs and benefits will be examined, investigating areas such as: How much does the program cost? How large are its benefits relative to its costs from the perspectives of participants, taxpayers, employers, and society as a whole? How do costs and benefits differ across types of programs and types of participants?
Design, Sites, and Data Sources
ERA is really made up of many studies, one for each program. Each study is based on a random assignment design in which people in the target population are randomly selected to enroll in the program or to be in a control group that is not eligible for the program’s services. Because people are assigned to the groups at random at the beginning of the study, any differences between them that subsequently emerge can be attributed to the program.
A total of 16 ERA models are being implemented in eight states:
- California
- Illinois
- Minnesota
- New York
- Ohio
- Oregon
- South Carolina
- Texas
The evaluation draws on administrative and fiscal records, surveys of participants, and field visits to the sites.
What's Next
Random assignment of individuals into the study sample has been completed — more than 45,000 individuals are now part of the study. Two cross-site reports, describing the early implementation experiences of the programs, were released in 2002 and 2003. Seven reports detailing program implementation and early impacts of individual models have been released since 2005, with more to come in 2008.
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