On Sunday, August 28, 2005, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune published an editorial, "Welfare Sequel/A Fading Promise," that featured findings from the recent MDRC report, Turning Welfare into a Work Support: Six-Year Impacts on Parents and Children from the Minnesota Family Investment Program, by Lisa A. Gennetian, Cynthia Miller, and Jared Smith. The editorial begins:

Some 15 years ago Minnesota embarked on an experiment in welfare reform that would earn it a national reputation in social science circles. Its strategy was exemplary: scrupulous empirical research and bipartisan accord in the Legislature. The product was exemplary, too: Outside evaluators found that the Minnesota Family Investment Program was among the best in the country at moving welfare recipients into jobs and achieved unparalleled results in reducing poverty and improving family well-being.

This month those same evaluators, a New York organization called MDRC, came back to Minnesota with a six-year follow-up study, and it turns out that the program is still bearing fruit. While its impacts on earnings and incomes faded somewhat over time, the children of participating families continued to do better in school years after the program ended and, remarkably, the program's most disadvantaged families saw sustained gains in employment and family well-being. "Minnesota had an unusual commitment to reducing dependency and reducing poverty, and it's still producing results for some of the most disadvantaged families," MDRC president Gordon Berlin said in an interview last week.

This would be a source of pride in Minnesota, except that two years ago the state quietly but abruptly began retreating from its ambitious antipoverty strategy…….«more»