National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies

As policymakers have sought to balance the goal of fostering poor children's well-being with that of encouraging adult's self-sufficiency, public assistance has become more predicated on custodial parents' involvement in work or mandatory welfare-to-work programs. This summary report examines the effects of welfare-to-work programs implemented as part of the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training Program (jobs) on the children of adults mandated to participate. The evaluation focused on children's development and well-being in a sample of families with preschool-age children at the start of the evaluation. The findings indicated that the welfare-to-work programs implemented as part of the jobs program did have significant impacts on children's development, but these impacts were not widespread and were generally small. There were favorable impacts particularly in the area of cognitive development and particularly at one site. There were unfavorable child health impacts, specifically at one site. Findings in the area of children's behavior and emotional adjustment encompassed both favorable and unfavorable impacts. Findings for a subgroup of higher risk families were few and tended generally to be small. Unfavorable impacts were found for children from lower-risk families at three sites. The unfavorable and policy relevant impacts occurred in a concentrated manner and some had moderate to large effect sizes. It was concluded that most children were not adversely affected, and in some cases were helped, by their mothers' participation in a jobs program. Further follow-up will be important because of the limited unfavorable impacts. (Contains 37 references.) (Kb).