Volume 30, Number 4 (Fall) 1995
Long, Sharon K., and Douglas A. Wissoker. 1995. "Welfare Reform at Three Years: The Case of Washington State's Family Independence Program." Journal of Human Resources 30(4):766-790.
This paper reports the findings of an evaluation of the Family Independence Program (FIP), a welfare reform demonstration operated in Washington Sate between 19898 and 1993. Despite being designed to increase employment and reduce welfare recipiency, the analysis shows that FIP had the opposite effect: employment was lower and welfare participation higher than under the AFDC program. Since FIP shared many features of the federal Job Opportunities and basic Skills Training (JOBS) program, which was implemented two years later, these findings raise concerns about the potential impacts of that program, as well as the impacts of future state and federal reform efforts.
The authors are Senior Research Associates at the Urban Institute. This paper is based on the Evaluation of the Washington Sate Family Independence program conducted by the Urban Institute under contract from the Washington State legislative Budget Committee. Opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of Washington State officials, the Urban Institute, or its sponsors. The authors wish to acknowledge the helpful comments and suggestions of Gary Burtless, Glen Cain, Thomas Fraker, David Greenberg, Joseph Hotz, Pamela Loprest, Phillip Robins, Felicity Skidmore, Michael Wiseman, and Doug Wolf; the members of the FIP Evaluation Advisory Committee, especially Ernst Stromsdorfer; the Institute's evaluation team, especially Demetra Nightingale, Pamela Holcomb, Carolyn Taylor O'Brien, and Kristin Seefeldt; and the reviewer for this journal. Outstanding programming support for the evaluation was provided by Daniel Dowhan, Sharon Hirabayashi, and Neal Jeffries. Most of all, the authors thank Lee Bawden for his intellectual guidance and support throughout this research and their many other research endeavors at the Institute. They regret Lee's untimely death and remember him with great affection and respect. The data used in this article can be obtained beginning in June 1996 through June 1999 from the authors: The Urban Institute, 2100 M Street, NW, Washington, DC 20037.
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