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Project Description

GAIN aims to increase employment and foster self-sufficiency among people receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). GAIN was originally mandatory for all welfare recipients except single parents with children under the age of six (and was later reduced to three under JOBS). Welfare recipients are exempt from remaining registered in the program if they obtain a full-time job or are chronically ill. GAIN’s regulations permit temporary deferral from the participation requirement for those who have a part-time job, temporary illness, family emergency, or another situation that precludes attending an activity.

Project duration: Jul 1989 - Dec 1997

Sites studied include Alameda county (Oakland), California
Butte county, California
Los Angeles county (Los Angeles), California
Riverside county (Riverside), California
San Diego county (San Diego), California
Tulare county, California

Sample Characteristics and Sites Studied

33,000 welfare applicants and recipients.

Random sample of program group (assigned to participate in GAIN) and control group (not allowed to participate in GAIN but able to use other community services) members.

Recent Findings in Brief

07/01/96: GAIN Evaluation: Five Year Impacts on Employment, Earnings, and AFDC Receipt

Final Implementation Findings:

"The six counties made different decisions about how much to emphasize quick entry into the labor market versus the longer and more expensive process of building registrants’ human capital through education and training"(xxv).

"All six counties successfully communicated to registrants that the participation requirement was real and would be enforced, although the counties varied in the extent to which they relied on GAIN’s formal penalty process"(xxv).

Final Impact Findings:

"GAIN increased the average earnings of experimentals by 23% during the 5 years after orientation. In all but one county these effects were statistically significant and were large or grew larger over time. GAIN reduced experimentals’ average AFDC payments by 7 percent, a result with a leveling off of GAIN’s impacts on this measure by the third year"(xxvii).

"GAIN’s impacts varied by county. One county (Riverside) has large earnings gains and welfare savings during the 5 years of follow-up, and these effects were achieved across a wide variety of subgroups. Three counties (Alameda, Butte, and San Diego) had more moderate earnings gains and welfare savings. Of the two remaining counties, one (Los Angeles) achieved welfare savings but with little effect on earnings gains, while the other (Tulare) produced earnings gains but with little effect on welfare payments until the last two years of follow-up"(xxvii).

"GAIN produced a small increase in the proportion of experimentals whose combined income from earnings, AFDC, and Food Stamps exceeded the poverty line. GAIN reduced by a small amount (3 percentage points) the proportion of experimentals who were on AFDC during the last quarter of year 5. Even in the best performing county (Riverside), almost one-third of experimentals received AFDC during that last quarter"(xxxiii).

"GAIN produced earnings and welfare savings for a variety of subgroups, including (in some counties) registrants who had received AFDC for more than two years prior to entering the program, showing GAIN’s potential to reach a difficult-to-serve population"(xxxix).

"GAIN’s impacts on single parents with children under the age of six largely paralleled its impacts on single parents whose children were age 6 or older in the three counties that served a substantial number of single parents with younger children"(xxxix).

"In Riverside, GAIN’s already large impacts on earnings and AFDC payments were not improved for registrants who were assigned to case managers with client-staff ratios of 53-to-1 rather than 97-to-1"(x1).

Final Cost-Benefit Findings:

"In five of the six counties, experimentals, on average, were somewhat better off financially as a result of the GAIN program"(x1iv).

"From the standpoint of the government budget, the program more than paid for itself in two of the six counties (Riverside and San Diego). A third county (Butte) led to the government budget ‘breaking even’"(x1iv).

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