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