Can Post-Employment Services Combined with Financial Incentives Improve Employment Retention for Welfare Recipients? Evidence from the Texas Employment Retention and Advancement Evaluation

Richard Dorsett

No 409, National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) Discussion Papers from National Institute of Economic and Social Research

Abstract: Data from a recently-completed experimental program for out-of-work welfare recipients in Texas are used to examine the effects of a time-limited financial incentive coupled with post-employment services on recipients’ rates of entering and leaving employment. While there is strong evidence that such programs can increase overall employment, the crucial question of how these increases arise is not well-understood. This paper presents a rigorous analysis of employment entry and exit effects, using a fully-specified dynamic model of employment duration that accounts for non-random sorting into employment statuses through flexible specifications for duration dependence and unobserved heterogeneity. The results indicate that for the Corpus Christi site, short-term effects were due to both employment retention and employment entry but, over time (as the program ceased operation), the retention effects faded out but the employment entry effects persisted and grew. For the Fort Worth site, there were smaller effects overall and less evidence of impacts that lasted much beyond the program operation period.

Date: 2013-04
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.niesr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/dp409_0-2.pdf

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:nsr:niesrd:409

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) Discussion Papers from National Institute of Economic and Social Research 2 Dean Trench Street Smith Square London SW1P 3HE. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Library & Information Manager ().