Welfare, jobs and basic skills: The employment prospects of welfare recipients in the most populous US counties (original) (raw)
Related papers
The basic skills of welfare recipients: Implications for welfare reform
1999
Johnson and Sonya M. Tafoya, analyze the National Adult Literacy Survey to assess the basic skills of adults on welfare and the likelihood that welfare recipients will be able to find and hold full-time jobs, given their educational background and skill level. In spite of the remarkable reduction in welfare rolls since the reform legislation of 1996, and the sustained growth of the California economy, the findings do not augur well for the poor still on the rolls. Welfare recipients in California are found to have substantially lower basic skills than other adults in the state and the nation, even when compared to other adults with the same level of education. Why, then, are the rolls shrinking and applications for assistance continuing to decline? The authors do not have a direct answer, but they do find that over 50 percent of the adults in California who have basic skills and iv demographic characteristics similar to welfare recipients, but who are not receiving welfare, work at least part time. Most hold jobs intermittently, and the jobs are low-paying. These findings suggest that some welfare recipients could be similarly employed. The authors wave a flag of caution, however, and note that any softening of the economy for a sustained period could hit these workers-the ones with the lowest levels of basic skills-the hardest. There is no major reform of public policy that has come under closer scrutiny than welfare reform. For those who cheer the strong economy and the declining caseload, there are others who see a grim tale of poorly educated and undernourished children whose parents will return to the rolls with the first downturn in the California job market. The authors suggest that improving the basic skills of welfare recipients, although difficult, merits public policy attention; some contact with the job market, however unsteady, is a realistic option for some, if not all, of those currently receiving assistance. Future publications by PPIC will explore this welfare/work relationship in further detail.
Welfare Recipients' Job Skills and Employment Prospects
The Future of Children, 1997
The welfare reform goal of moving mothers who rely on welfare into private-sector employment cannot be achieved only by changes in public policy. Employment rates reflect the job qualifications of individuals, obstacles to work outside the home, the attractiveness of available jobs, and the capacity of the labor market to absorb new workers at particular skill levels. This article examines how each of these factors is likely to influence current welfare recipients' success in finding employment and the wages they are likely to earn. The author concludes that the skill deficiencies of recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children do not represent an insurmountable barrier to employment, although these deficiencies do restrict the wages recipients can earn. Without continued public assistance in the form of wage subsidies, child care payments, or help securing health insurance, most families that move from welfare to work will remain below the poverty level.
Getting jobs, keeping jobs, and earning a living wage: Can welfare reform work
Institute for Research …, 1998
Most discussions of welfare and work have focused on how demographic characteristics, schooling, training, and work experience limit welfare mothers' employment and wages, but they have largely ignored factors such as inappropriate workplace behaviors, expectations of discrimination and harassment, depression, alcoholism, and domestic violence, all of which may affect welfare mothers and make employment difficult. In this paper we review the prevalence of these individual-level barriers and argue that they, in combination with an economy which does not pay low-skill workers well, are likely to impede employment and self-sufficiency for a large proportion of welfare mothers. At the end of the review, we summarize the current state of knowledge about barriers to the employment of welfare recipients and suggest several ways in which welfare-to-work programs might address these barriers.
Barriers to the employment of welfare recipients
Prosperity for all? …, 2000
Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 have not allayed policy concerns about the employability of recipients remaining on the rolls. Analysis of potential barriers to employment can address whether current recipients have problems that either singly or in combination make it difficult for them to comply with the new requirements for getting and keeping jobs. In this paper, we explore the prevalence and work effects of 14 potential barriers in a new survey of a representative sample of 753 urban single-mother recipients. We report the prevalence of the barriers and how their number predicts employment rates, controlling for demographic characteristics. We also analyze which individual barriers are associated with employment and how a model inclusive of a comprehensive array of barriers improves upon a traditional human capital model of the work effects of education and work and welfare history. Single mothers who received welfare in 1997 had higher rates of personal health and mental health problems, domestic violence, and children's health problems than do women in national samples, but they were no more likely than the general population to be drug or alcohol dependent. Only 15 percent of respondents had none of the barriers and almost two-thirds had two or more barriers. The numbers of multiple barriers were strongly and negatively associated with working, and among the individual barriers, low education, lack of access to transportation, poor health, having drug dependence or a major depressive disorder, and several experiences of workplace discrimination reduced employment. Welfare-to-work programs need to be more finely targeted with respect to exemptions and service provision, and states should consider providing longer-term and enhanced supports for those who face low prospects of leaving welfare for employment.
2002
As of February, 1999, 231,766 people were on welfare in Los Angeles. To put these figures into perspective, Los Angeles has more welfare recipients than every state other than New York and California. With this large and highly diverse caseload comes an enormous bureaucracy, one that has had difficulty responding to the shift in the welfare system from one that guaranteed public assistance to those in need, to a program that now offers temporary financial assistance and mandates employment. Some studies suggest that, among other obstacles to employment, welfare recipients face a spatial separation from jobs and other employment related services. Geographic data for Los Angeles show that there is a spatial mismatch between the residential location of welfare recipients and the location of low wage jobs. However, the mismatch is not one between central city and suburbs, despite job growth in suburban neighbourhoods, the highest concentration of jobs in Los Angeles remains in the centr...