How can welfare-to-work programs increase family resources?
The administrators of all the welfare-to-work programs studied in NEWWS hoped that their programs’ preemployment services, mandates, and messages would enable welfare recipients eventually to increase their income and move out of poverty, but their relative emphasis on and methods of achieving this goal differed. The education-focused programs emphasized this goal most explicitly — by providing education and training activities, which were seen as a gateway to high-paying, stable employment. The Portland program emphasized this goal in another way — by encouraging welfare recipients participating in job search to accept only jobs that paid above the minimum wage and offered opportunity for advancement. Notably, however, none of the NEWWS programs provided earnings supplements to low-wage workers, as many states now do, in the form of substantial earned income disregards or work incentive payments provided outside the welfare system. (All the program and control groups in NEWWS were e
