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Of welfare-to-work programs evaluated by random assignment, two stand out as having exceptionally large estimated effects: one in Riverside, California, and the other in Portland, Oregon. The authors use data from 24 evaluations and the tools of meta-analysis to examine why. The findings indicate that the apparently superior performance of these two programs in increasing the earnings of participants is only partly attributable to program design (for example, the type of services provided, the use of sanctions, and the quality of program administration). Differences in caseload characteristics and site characteristics are probably more important. However, Riverside and Portland's relatively large effects in reducing the percentage of participants on the AFDC rolls appear mainly attributable to the design of the programs run in these sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Welfare policy in the United States has moved from passive transfer payments to 'activating' welfare recipients toward greater self-sufficiency. Using meta-analysis, we assess around 100 mandatory U.S. welfare-to-work programs, which were evaluated by random assignment, to identify those performing best and worst in terms of their effects on participants' earnings and the proportion of participants moving off welfare. Controlling for participant and site characteristics, the program features that differentiate “good” from “bad” programs are found to be whether the interventions increased the use of sanctions, job search, and work experience, which increases the size of program effects, and whether they incorporated financial incentives, which reduces program effect sizes. However, rather than abandoning financial incentives wholesale, we argue for a better balance of welfare reform measures to help to reduce the risks of poverty and to community cohesion, as well as ensure greater self-sufficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous programmes designed to encourage welfare recipients to move into work and off benefit have been evaluated in the United States. Many have randomly assigned potential participants into `experimental' and `control' groups to generate unbiased estimates of the effectiveness of the programmes. The results of the evaluations have been selectively influential in shaping policy developments on both sides of the Atlantic, but a thorough understanding of the diversity of experience has been lacking. Applying meta-analysis techniques to a specially constructed database of evaluations in over 50 US sites, this article reports on the first programme-level, systematic meta-evaluation of welfare-to-work programmes. The results confirm the superiority of approaches that prioritize immediate work over human-capital investment but reveal that caseload characteristics and local environment can be equally important as or even more important than programme design. The article concludes with a discussion of the potential and limitations of meta-evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence that welfare-to-work programmes in the USA succeed in boosting welfare recipients' earnings at modest cost has helped shape policy in Britain since 1997. So too has the belief that programmes that prioritise moving people into work quickly are more effective than ones that seek to enhance human capital. However, there is little evidence on how long the beneficial effects of programmes persist after individuals leave them. The analysis reported draws on the experience of 64 US welfare-to-work programmes that have all been evaluated using random assignment. It concludes that, on average, these programmes have a positive effect on participants' earnings for five to six years. The effects of `work first' interventions are most marked early on and decline more rapidly than those of programmes emphasising human capital. Nevertheless, work first interventions typically increase earnings received over six years by more than two-and-a-half times that achieved by human capital approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]