Identifying the Effect of a Welfare-to-Work Program Using Capacity Constraint: a New York City Quasi-Experinmet

Authors

John Ifcher, Santa Clara UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Summer 2010

Publisher

Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract

In 1999 general assistance recipients in New York City were required to participate in a job training and outplacement assistance program. Initially, recipients were enrolled in ‘waves’ due to capacity constraints. The program’s impact is identified using a quasiexperiment in which selectees are compared to concomitantly eligible non-selectees. Selectees are 15 percentage points more likely to start a job and 10 percentage points more likely to exit welfare than are non-selectees. This methodology is important since random-assignment experiments can be costly and difficult to implement. Further, experiments are not impervious to criticism; this procedure addresses three of five known shortcomings.

Comments

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Eastern Economic Journal. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Ifcher, J. (2010). Identifying the Effect of a Welfare-To-Work Program Using Program Capacity Constraints: A New York City Quasi-Experiment. Eastern Economic Journal, 36(3), 299–316 is available online at: http://doi.org/10.1057/eej.2009.11

Recommended Citation

Ifcher, J. (2010). Identifying the Effect of a Welfare-To-Work Program Using Program Capacity Constraints: A New York City Quasi-Experiment. Eastern Economic Journal, 36(3), 299–316.