The effects of welfare-to-work strategies on TANF recipients' outcomes: Event history analyses of employment, jobs, welfare use, and economic well-being

For almost four decades, the U.S. government has been trying to reduce welfare caseloads by moving welfare mothers into the labor market. To accomplish its goal, it has used two major Welfare-to-Work (WTW) strategies: Human Capital Development (HCD) strategy and Labor Force Attachment (LFA) strategy. Although the LFA strategy has won popularity over the HCD among policymakers over the years, existing evidence on the effectiveness of these strategies is not yet conclusive.; The main purpose of this research was to examine the net effects of the two WTW strategies manifested in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) on welfare recipients' outcomes such as dynamics of employment, welfare use, poverty, jobs, and economic self-sufficiency, taking into account the effects of other factors such as state economy and most TANF policy rules including family cap, diversion, time limits, work requirements, sanction, etc, that may have also affected the outcomes of interest. This study estimated entries, exits, and transitions of each outcome using event history methods. It used individual longitudinal data from the Survey of Program Dynamics (SPD) and merged it with the Welfare Rules Data (WRD) for state TANF policies and data from Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for states' monthly economic conditions.; The discrete time logit models and competing risk models of this study resulted in the following four major findings: First, HCD strategies are important in bringing out higher employment rates and longer employment retention. Second, economic security through financial assistances is strongly needed to improve employment durations and reduce welfare recidivism. Third, a strong economy is a more powerful predictor of TANF recipients' outcome than WTW programs and other specific TANF policies. Lastly, state governments can better assist successful WTW transitions by identifying specific policy rules that suit the primary goals of their WTW programs because it is often likely for their welfare recipients to respond to these specific policies to the best of their economic interests. Findings and implications of this study offered important insights into how the federal and state governments can best assist their TANF recipients in successfully making WTW transitions and achieving economic self-sufficiency.