Moving Up, Moving Out, or Going Nowhere? A Study of the Employment Patterns of Young Women and the Implications for Welfare Mothers

Abstract

Conventional wisdom holds that women on welfare will be better off in the long run if they take a job, even if it means initially having less money to spend on their and their children's needs. Underlying this thinking is the belief that women who take low-paying jobs will eventually move up to higher paying jobs either with their current employer or by changing employers. This paper examines the employment transitions of young women focusing on the likelihood that women who turn to the welfare system for support will make the transition from low-paying to high-paying jobs. The data are drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY). Based on the experiences of women who never received welfare, an estimated one-quarter of young women who received welfare could be firmly established in jobs paying more than $9.50 an hour by ages 26 and 27. An additional 40 percent would work steadily but in low-paying jobs, and more than one-third would work only sporadically. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

Work, Income, and Material Hardship after Welfare Reform

“…Evaluations of welfareto-work demonstrations typically report that while most participants get jobs, a large proportion, often a majority, lose those jobs within a year (Hershey & Pavetti, 1997;Berg et al, 1991;Friedlander & Burtless, 1995;Gueron & Pauly, 1991). Also, wages are low among welfare recipients, and recent research suggests that their wages grow over time, but only for the minority of former recipients who established regular, stable full time work patterns (Corcoran et al,4 forthcoming; Pavetti & Acs, 1996). Certain characteristics enhance recipients' ability to remain employed once they leave welfare --high school graduates, those with prior work experience and women with fewer than three children are less likely to return to welfare (Bane & Ellwood, 1994;Harris, 1996).…”

Before and After TANF: The Economic Well‐Being of Women Leaving Welfare

“…(For national studies, see, for example, Harris, 1996;Meyer and Cancian, 1998;and Pavetti and Acs, 1997. For studies in individual states or groups of states, see, for example, Brauner and Loprest, 1999;Friedlander and Burtless, 1995;Loprest, 1999; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1999a,b;U.S. General Accounting Office, 1999.…”

Evaluation of Rhode Island's Family Independence Program: May 1996 - April 2000

“…Note that we have included separate variables for children that are of public school age. (See Blank, 1997;Eissa & Liebman, 1996;Harris, 1996;Kim & Mergoupis, 1997;Lemke, et al, 2001;Pavetti & Acs, 1997;and Queralt, et al, 2000 for reviews of the literature on socio-demographic factors affecting employment and earnings.) We control for Community Characteristics (CC) by including a series of community-specific binaries.…”