Welfare, work experience, and economic self-sufficiency

Susanna Loeb and Mary Corcoran
Additional contact information
Susanna Loeb: Stanford University, Stanford, California, Postal: Stanford University, Stanford, California
Mary Corcoran: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, Postal: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan

Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 2001, vol. 20, issue 1, 1-20

Abstract: The potential of former AFDC recipients to earn a living wage is central to the success of welfare-to-work programs. Previous studies have found that welfare recipihyphen;ents see little increase in their wages over time. Low wage growth could arise from either low returns to work experience or low levels of experience. This distinction is important for designing effective welfare policy. In the following paper, we estimate how wages grew with work experience between 1978 and 1992 for a national sample of women from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. We compare women who never received welfare with both short- and long-term recipients in order to see to what extent the rates of wage growth with work experience differ. We find that they differ very little. We use numerous specification checks to test the robustness of our results and find consistent evidence that the wages of AFDC recipients grew at a rate similar to those of nonrecipients once work experience is taken into account. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

Date: 2001
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:jpamgt:v:20:y:2001:i:1:p:1-20

DOI: 10.1002/1520-6688(200124)20:1<1::AID-PAM1001>3.0.CO;2-I

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Policy Analysis and Management from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().