Enforcing a participation mandate in a welfare-to-work program

In this article, we use data from a six-county evaluation of California's welfare-to-work program for recipients of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) to examine the consequences of emphasizing either personalized attention or formal penalties to achieve compliance with the program's participation mandate. Among the outcomes measured were the degree of recipients' participation in program activities, recipients' perceptions of the program and their case managers, and the program's effects on recipients' earnings and use of welfare. The results suggest that, overall, emphasizing personalized attention may be moderately more effective in attaining high levels of participation. At the same time, emphasizing penalties does not preclude high participation, nor does it prevent a majority of recipients from developing positive views of the program or case managers. This approach may generally help a program achieve welfare savings, but it might not help improve recipients' earnings unless it is combined with certain other program practices.