Work after welfare: Women's work effort, occupation, and economic well-being

Current welfare reforms attempt to move low-income women with children from reliance on welfare to work. The logic of some current efforts relies on the thesis that employment, even in low-paying jobs, leads eventually to self-sufficiency. With data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, the authors analyzed the relationship between work history and economic success during the first five years after women leave welfare. They found that over time median wages and hours worked increased and that earnings generally improved. Nonetheless, even in the fifth year, only one in four consistently worked full-time. Although current welfare reforms are focused on moving women into jobs quickly, results cited in this article suggest that employment itself is not a guarantee of economic success. Key words: policy; poverty; welfare reform; women's work Proponents of the 1996 welfare reform legislation hoped that the new policies would move women receiving welfare from a reliance on welfare to reliance on earnings from work and to economic self-sufficiency. The focus on moving women into jobs quickly has raised important questions about how women can achieve self-sufficiency. Some proponents have argued that any job is superior to welfare and that women should begin working, even in jobs with low wages, because their work experience will eventually lead them to economic success. Others have argued that jobs open to women with limited education and job skills often fail to provide opportunities for advancement. Some new state welfare programs require caseworkers to determine which welfare recipients reasonably can be expected to find jobs immediately, and these determinations have important implications for benefits eligibility. Thus, for both macro policy making and for the implementation of policy on a micro level, it is important to understand how women have moved successfully from welfare to self-sufficiency through work. At present we have only limited understanding of the paths that welfare recipients have taken to achieve economic well-being, particularly the paths taken by women. This analysis uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) to examine the job patterns of young women who left the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program and the relationship among these experiences and their economic status during the fourth and fifth years after leaving AFDC. The experiences of families in the AFDC program are likely to differ from those in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. However, their life experiences provide some of the best information currently available on the relationship among welfare, work, and later economic well-being after leaving welfare programs. Findings showed the range of income and earnings for women after welfare and how these are correlated with early job experiences. Our analyses are necessarily descriptive and cannot provide a basis for causal interpretation. For example, that women entering professional jobs do significantly better than those entering food service jobs does not necessarily mean that the answer to low-wage employment would be to place all women in professional jobs. Many women on welfare have insufficient education and training to compete for such jobs. Moreover, women who do have these opportunities may have unobserved characteristics that enable them to enter and maintain professional employment (for example, see Neenan & Orthner [1996] on the role of attitude and other unmeasured characteristics). Nonetheless, the information provides a picture of the job patterns of women who have left welfare, the association between initial job characteristics and later outcomes, and the extent to which work leads to self-sufficiency. EARLIER LITERATURE Substantial literature has focused on the amount of time an individual has received AFDC benefits, on events associated with getting off AFDC, and on the likelihood of returning to AFDC (for a review, see Moffitt, 1992; for a discussion of economic factors and cultural factors, see Kunz & Born, 1996). …