|
Policy Framework
The federal welfare overhaul of 1996 ushered in myriad policy changes aimed at getting low-income parents off public assistance and into employment. These changes — especially cash welfare’s transformation from an entitlement into a time-limited benefit contingent on work participation — have intensified the need to help low-income families become economically self-sufficient and remain so in the long term. Although a fair amount is known about how to help welfare recipients prepare for and find jobs in the first place, the Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) project is the most comprehensive effort thus far to discover what approaches help – and do not help – welfare recipients and other low-income people stay steadily employed and advance in their jobs.
Agenda, Scope, and Goals
Launched in 1999, with the final publication expected in 2012, the ERA project encompasses more than a dozen demonstration programs and uses a rigorous research design to analyze the implementation and impacts of each one. With technical assistance from MDRC and The Lewin Group, most of the programs built on prior initiatives. Because the programs' aims and target populations varied, so did the services they provided:
- Advancement programs focused on helping low-income workers move into better jobs by offering services such as career counseling and education and training.
- Placement and retention programs aimed to help participants — mostly “hard-to-employ” people, such as welfare recipients with disabilities or substance abuse problems — to find and hold jobs.
- “Mixed goals” programs, targeted primarily at welfare recipients who were searching for jobs, focused on job placement, retention, and advancement in that order.
The project’s evaluation component investigated each program in the following areas:
- Implementation. What services were provided, how were they delivered, who received them, and how were problems addressed?
- Impacts. To what extent did each program improve employment retention, advancement, and other key outcomes? Looking across programs, which approaches were most effective, and for whom?
In addition, for selected programs, costs and benefits were examined, investigating areas such as: How much did the program cost? How large were its benefits relative to its costs from the perspectives of participants, taxpayers, and society as a whole?
Design, Sites, and Data Sources
ERA is really made up of many studies, one for each program. Each study uses a random assignment research design in which people in the target population were randomly selected to enroll in the program or to be in a control group that was not eligible for the program’s services. Because people were assigned to the groups at random at the beginning of the study, any differences between them that subsequently emerge can be attributed to the program. More than 45,000 individuals are part of the study across the various sites.
A total of 16 ERA models were implemented in eight states:
- California
- Illinois
- Minnesota
- New York
- Ohio
- Oregon
- South Carolina
- Texas
The evaluation draws on administrative and fiscal records, surveys of participants, and field visits to the sites.
What's Next
Two cross-site reports, describing the early implementation experiences of the programs, were released in 2002 and 2003. In addition, more than a dozen reports detailing program implementation and the early impacts of individual models have been published. In 2010, a final impact report on 12 models was released, as well as a benefit-cost report analyzing results for three of the models. Several practitioner briefs and issue papers have been published. Forthcoming in the last phase of the study will be a cross-site synthesis, slated for publication in 2012.
|
|
