|
What Is the Best Way to Move Welfare Recipients into Work?
- Help welfare recipients find jobs quickly?
or
- Enroll welfare recipients in education or training programs before they look for jobs?
Nearly two decades of highly credible research using random assignment methods demonstrates that neither approach alone works best to increase welfare recipients’ employment and earnings and to reduce their welfare receipt. Instead, the most effective strategy is to employ a combination of the two — a “mixed” approach.
Source: Gayle Hamilton, Moving People from Welfare to Work: Lessons from the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies (New York: MDRC, 2002).
As this figure shows, programs using a mixed approach (in this case, in Portland, Oregon, and Riverside, California) created more than double the earnings gains for welfare recipients when compared to programs using either of the approaches alone.
The mixed strategy works best for a wide range of welfare recipients, including those with and without a high school education and those with and without recent work experience. Depending on their individual work experience or educational level, welfare recipients in these programs are helped either to find a job quickly or to enroll first in education and training.
Click on the More Information link below for a seven-minute video explaining these results in more detail.
For More Information, Click Here.
|
