This report introduces the MyGoals for Employment Success demonstration. MyGoals is an employment coaching program that helps participants set and achieve goals. It seeks to do so by explicitly focusing attention on participants' executive skills. MyGoals also offers participants a set of financial incentives to encourage, facilitate, and reward…

Used administrative (for 20,237 adults) and survey data (from about 200 leavers per month) from Georgia to examine risk factors for recidivism among welfare leavers and the relationship between recidivism and leavers' ability to find sustained employment. Results show a threshold of earnings that welfare leavers need to survive at the poverty…

This study investigated the effects of housing assistance received by children between the ages of 10 and 16 at some point during the period 1968-1982 on four outcomes experienced in adulthood: (1) welfare receipt between ages 20-27; (2) earnings above poverty between ages 25-27; (3) total earnings between 25-27; and (4) educational attainment at…

This review attempts to consider all publicly available studies that examine employment outcomes for people who have left welfare. Only studies that describe their methodology clearly and report survey response rates of 50% or higher are included, for a total of 11 studies reviewed. These studies cover various geographic areas, labor market…

This document presents a welfare reform proposal designed to ensure a transition toward economic self-sufficiency and an end to poverty. It consists of four distinct elements that form an integrated and interdependent whole. The first element is a series of initiatives to achieve an adequate income maintenance system that guarantees that all needy…

Examined the economic well-being of adult refugees who arrived in the United States as children. Examined five refugee groups (Southeast Asians, Soviets/East Europeans, Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans) using data from the 1990 Census of Population and Housing. Findings indicate the economic status of childhood refugee arrivals differed by…

This report displays 1990 U.S. census data for Colorado and each of its 63 counties. Selected characteristics include population, English as a Second Language, educational attainment, labor force participation, poverty status, and public assistance income. Data, which may be useful in examining assumptions made concerning those characteristics,…

Workforce Investment Act (WIA) and the TANF (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) programs can be coordinated in a number of ways, some of them especially focused on women. For example, research suggests the following: (1) WIA and TANF can be coordinated to improve low-income women's human capital development; (2) many states and localities…

This study was conducted to determine how many workers are in low-wage jobs; their characteristics and changes in their characteristics over time; the characteristics of the low-wage jobs; gender, sex, and racial factors influencing participation in low-wage jobs; and the relationship of low-wage work to family poverty and welfare receipt. The…

Current debates about welfare reform center on the upcoming reauthorization of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) legislation. The provisions of TANF include the elimination of the entitlement to cash assistance, block grant funding to the states, mandatory work requirements, sanctions, a 5-year limit on cash assistance, and…

Working diligently, living frugally, and restraining one's lusts and appetites within defensible boundaries have often been classified as middle class values. A growing concern of the U.S. public is the dysfunctional conduct of many of those dependent upon its support. However, society must demonstrate persuasively that rectitude pays. Society…

With the transformation of the welfare system, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) reviewed the employment and training components of 13 of its programs. The evaluation begins with a literature review that identifies these four groups of elements associated with positive outcomes: employment services that have an employment…

The 16 chapters in this five-part book, each by different authors, trace the effects of welfare reform (mandated by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996), upon poor people in rural areas of the United States. The book begins with an introduction called "As the Dust Settles: Welfare Reform and Rural…

A summary of recent research shows that more than 11.5 million children lived in poverty in 2001 and likely will experience long-term negative effects of poverty, such as dropping out of high school, compromised physical growth and cognitive development, and reduced physical and psychological well-being as an adult. Improving the home life of…

In the context of the reauthorization of the federal Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) block grant, research data about the benefits of resulting programs were synthesized and recommendations were made for changes to current law based on the research. Some of the research findings were that those who leave welfare are not earning…