From Welfare to Workfare : Key study shows strengths of job programs

An independent analysis of California’s large and ambitious Greater Avenues to Independence (GAIN) program provides the first significant evidence in the nation that mandatory state workfare programs that emphasize education and employment can succeed in reducing welfare caseloads and helping poor parents get jobs.

The national study, by the nonprofit Manpower Development Research Corp., indicates that even during a recession a well-run, demanding and supportive workfare program can change behavior, increase earnings of welfare recipients and save government money.

These encouraging findings, based on a study of 33,000 welfare recipients in six California counties during the first year of GAIN, should send a clear message to Gov. Pete Wilson: Workfare can work; GAIN merits expansion.

GAIN, a mandatory workfare program for welfare recipients whose children are at least 3 years old, requires poor mothers and some jobless fathers to go back to school and look for a job.

Unlike other state workfare programs, California’s mandates a heavy educational component, but the program is flexible enough to allow a county to place immediate emphasis on getting a job.

Riverside County, under the leadership of a dynamic and highly motivated welfare director, Lawrence Townsend Jr., emphasized job placement and reported a 65% increase in the earnings of single mothers who participated in GAIN over those who did not. Townsend’s staff contacted local businesses to identify jobs and encouraged welfare recipients to look for a job first before participating in the high school equivalency program. In a tough-love approach, Riverside County also imposed sanctions on welfare recipients who refused to participate in GAIN; 11% lost some benefits.

Other counties had much less success. Los Angeles County did poorly, researchers conjecture, because of a hard-core welfare population that is older, with little education or recent job experience. Tulare County also did poorly because a freeze wiped out farm jobs, proving that no workfare program can succeed when there are no jobs.

California spends $108 million on GAIN; the federal government, $220 million. Full funding in California would require an increase of $200 million, which is unlikely in a time of growing state deficit.

That increase could come from the federal government if Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan (D-N.Y.) succeeds in increasing federal workfare funding to $4 billion while limiting the amount of matching funds by the states.

There are lessons for Gov. Wilson and the Legislature in this key study. In GAIN, California already has the beginnings of solid welfare reform--but it needs nurturing.