A Helping Hand Goes a Long Way: Long-Term Effects of Counselling and Support to Workfare Program Participants

Gustavo Bobonis, Aneta Bonikowska, Philip Oreopoulos, W. Craig Riddell and Steven P. Ryan

No 30405, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study the medium- and long-run impacts of the Canada Self-Sufficiency Project (SSP) Plus program, which randomly offered intensive employment support services for up to three years to long-term welfare recipients eligible for temporary earnings subsidies. We examine whether this intervention—designed to address both economic and psychosocial barriers to finding and retaining desirable employment—produced long-run changes in individuals’ socioeconomic trajectories. We link study participants to high-frequency survey data and to their federal tax and employer-employee matched records for up to 20 years following random assignment. The intensive services treatment resulted in a 20–27 percent increase in participants’ annual earnings over the 20-year period and sustained increases in full-time employment during the first decade post-intervention. As potential mechanisms, treated individuals engaged in more job search and job-to-job transitions and secured employment in higher-wage jobs and at higher-paying firms.

JEL-codes: I3 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
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