What Works in Welfare Reform: Research Results: Employment and Earnings

	What Works in Welfare Reform Evidence and Lessons to Guide TANF Reauthorization
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TANF Guide>Research Results>Employment & Earnings summary


	Suggested Readings
	Employment and Earnings How Welfare and Work Policies Affect Employment and Income A Synthesis of Research National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies Implementation, Participation Patterns, Costs, and Two-Year Impacts of the Portland (Oregon) Welfare-to- Work Program National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies How Effective Are Different Welfare-to-Work Approaches? Five-Year Adult and Child Impacts for Eleven Programs Encouraging Work, Reducing Poverty The Impact of Work Incentive Programs Reforming Welfare and Rewarding Work Final Report on the Minnesota Family Investment Program New Hope for People With Low Incomes Two-Year Results of a Program to Reduce Poverty and Reform Welfare The Role of Education and Training in Welfare Reform

EMPLOYMENT AND EARNINGS: A wide range of welfare reform strategies has increased employment and earnings among single mothers. Education and training played an important supporting role in the most effective programs.

Nearly all of the welfare reform approaches that states have used - mandatory employment services, earnings supplements, time limits, and various combinations thereof - increased welfare recipients' employment and earnings. More

Earnings supplement programs produced their largest employment gains and lowest costs when targeted at long-term welfare recipients. More

Mandatory employment-services programs that tailored services to the needs of individual recipients - that is, mixed-strategy programs, which required some participants to start by looking for work and others to start with education or training - led to larger increases in employment and earnings than either a job-search-first approach or an education-first approach. More

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