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Policy Framework
Early childbearing puts teenagers at risk of myriad negative consequences, including single parenthood, unemployment, and poverty. Faced with the economic and emotional challenges of parenting, many custodial teen parents — nearly all of them mothers — drop out of school and turn to welfare to support themselves and their children. Knowing this group is disproportionately likely to stay on the rolls long term, the designers of Ohio’s Learning, Earning, and Parenting Program (LEAP) aimed to promote school attendance among pregnant and parenting teenagers on welfare through a combination of financial incentives and penalties. MDRC’s random assignment study of LEAP — which assessed the initiative’s implementation, effects on teens, and benefits and costs — began when the program was launched in 1989 and ended in 1997.
Agenda, Scope, and Goals
LEAP aimed to trigger a chain of effects on teens’ behavior — promoting academic progress, increasing high school diploma and GED receipt, and producing higher employment and lower welfare dependence later on. It differed from earlier initiatives targeted at teenage parents in three primary respects:
- LEAP was operated on a large scale. Participation was mandatory for all custodial teen parents receiving welfare in Ohio who were still in high school or had dropped out.
- Financial incentives and penalties were used to achieve the program’s aims. Teens who complied with LEAP rules had bonuses added to their monthly welfare grant — $62 for school enrollment and $62 for regular school attendance — whereas teens who failed to comply (without an acceptable reason) had $62 deducted from their grant.
- The program relied on the public school and adult education systems to provide education rather than attempting to mount its own classes or course of instruction. This feature made the LEAP approach relatively inexpensive to operate.
Design, Sites, and Data Sources
Starting in mid-1989, each of nearly 10,000 eligible teens was randomly assigned to a program group, which was subject to LEAP’s rules, bonuses, and penalties, or a control group, which remained subject to the prior welfare rules. Because teens were assigned to the groups at random, any differences in their experiences during the study’s four-and-a-half-year follow-up period can be confidently attributed to LEAP.
Though the program operated statewide, random assignment took place in 12 counties that together encompassed about two-thirds of Ohio’s total LEAP caseload: Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Lawrence, Lorain, Lucas, Montgomery, Muskingum, Stark, Summit, and Trumbull.
The findings are based on LEAP records, follow-up surveys of sample members conducted one year and three years after random assignment, and public administrative records.
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