What is the governments financial return on its investment in welfare-to-work programs?
The programs’ five-year benefits were also calculated in NEWWS. Benefits included the increases in earnings and decreases in welfare and food stamp payments discussed earlier, as well as dollar valuations of the programs’ estimated effects on Medicaid, job fringe benefits, taxes paid, and the costs of administering transfer programs such as food stamps. All of these effects were considered along with the programs’ estimated net costs to ascertain the net gains and losses to government budgets as well as to program group members resulting from the programs. Some limits on the comprehensiveness of the benefit-cost analysis, however, should be recognized. The analysis did not, for example, consider education benefits that are not reflected in earnings or put a dollar value on families’ or children’s well-being. • Government budgets came out ahead on their investments in about half of the NEWWS programs. One measure of cost-effectiveness is the return to government budgets per net dollar i
