The Family Transition Program: Final Report on Florida’s Initial Time-Limited Welfare Program

A pilot welfare reform project in Florida, launched more than two years before the landmark 1996 federal welfare law, has provided some of the first hard evidence about the imposition of time limits on receipt of cash welfare assistance. This is the final report of a six-year study conducted by MDRC that concluded that the Florida program increased employment and substantially reduced long-term welfare receipt, and did not find evidence that the program caused severe hardships. But the study also notes that the pilot operated under very favorable circumstances and cautions that time limits might produce different effects elsewhere.