This latest in a series of MDRC how-to guides identifies program features and administrative practices that can help states better target financial work incentives to intended beneficiaries, increase participation among eligible incentive recipients, and maximize the benefits of the incentives. Making Work Pay draws on in-depth investigations by MDRC researchers of pioneering financial work support programs in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Canada. The lessons it contains should prove especially timely as state and local governments, straining under severe budgetary pressures, strive to sustain earnings supplement programs and make their delivery more efficient.

From early 2001 to spring 2002, Hudson Institute researchers undertook an examination of faith-based contracting for social services in 15 states. Researchers attempted to determine how many contracts each state (or local government agencies within the state) held with faith-based organizations (FBOs), including houses of worship, under the four federal social welfare programs regulated by the charitable choice guidelines. The information gathered from this study was published in mid-2002 in the Collaborations Catalogue: A Report on Charitable Choice Implementation in 15 States. The study found 587 FBOs holding a total of 726 contracts totaling nearly $124 million dollars.

Authored by Nicholas W. Jenny. This Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, Fiscal Studies Program report examines State tax revenues through a variety of empirical measures. It compares State budget numbers from July-September 2003 to the same time span of the previous year. The report demonstrates that State tax revenue, after being adjusted for legislated tax changes, increased by 4.5 percent year-over-year in the July-September 2003 quarter.

Since the welfare reform of 1996, sanctions have become an important policy for States moving families off welfare and into work. Largely understudied, this research provides information on the use of sanctions in Illinois, New Jersey, and South Carolina.

The Welfare Indicators Act of 1994 directed HHS to study the most useful statistics for tracking and predicting dependence on three means-tested cash and nutritional assistance programs: TANF, Food Stamps, and SSI. This annual report presents data on measures of welfare recipiency, dependency, and predictors of welfare dependence. Contributors to this report include Gil Crouse, Sarah Douglas, Susan Hauan, Julia Isaacs, and Kendall Swenson of the Office of Human Services Policy under the direction of Don Winstead, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Human Services Policy, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation.

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.

Efforts to replicate the experience of the Center for Employment Training (CET) in San Jose, California -- a uniquely successful program that helped at-risk youth develop skills needed to compete in today's labor market -- showed mixed results. This examination of 12 replication sites after two-and-a-half years found that only four sites that implemented the CET model with high fidelity to the original program increased youths' participation in employment and training activities, leading to fairly large increases in the receipt of training credentials. The study found that CET worked best for young women enrolled at the high-fidelity sites, where participation resulted in a substantial increase in the number who worked during the follow-up period and a large increase in the number who were still working at the two-and-a-half year point. The lack of positive impacts for young males continues a disappointing pattern for disadvantaged men whose barriers to acquiring training that would help them to move into better jobs have yet to be addressed successfully by any employment programs.

This report sponsored by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) uses survey and administrative data to examine the personal characteristics and situations, potential challenges for employment, compensating strengths and resources, and employment outcomes of TANF recipients in Illinois.

Authored by Thomas M. Fraker, Dan M. Levy, Robert B. Olsen, and Rita A. Stapulonis. This Mathematica Policy Research Inc. Report to Congress Presents findings from the outcomes analysis component of the Welfare-to-Work evaluation describing characteristics and experiences of enrollees in 11 sites. The report finds that enrollees were more likely to receive employment preparation services than skill enhancement services; most were employed during the year after they entered WtW, but employment tended to be unstable; and those employed typically worked a lot of hours for low wages and few fringe benefits. In addition, poverty was high one year after program entry, but it was lower among those who were employed.

This report details the September 2002 Conference on ACF's Positive Youth Development initiative and provides information on how to effectively incorporate the initiative into a cross section of ACF supported programs such as TANF, Child Support, Head Start, Child Care, Child Welfare, Independent Living, and Runaway and Homeless Youth.