"A sizable number of controls used non-GAIN employment-related activities, usually vocational training and post-secondary education"(xxvi).

"The GAIN program substantially increased experimentals' participation in job search and basic education"(xxvi).

Interim Impact Findings:

"GAIN increased the proportion of experimentals who were ever employed in year 3 by 6 percentage points above the control group rate. At the same time, a majority of experimentals as well as controls did not work at all during that year"(xxx).

"Riverside and San Diego produced earnings gains mostly by increasing the rate and duration of employment, while Alameda and Butte produced about half their earnings gains by increasing the amount of money earned per quarter of employment"(xxxi).

"GAIN increased the proportion of experimentals who had more substantial earnings"(xxxiii).

"Several counties increased the proportion of registrants who made a permanent exit from AFDC during the available follow-up period, although this effect was not large"(xxxv).

"For the two basic education subgroups, GAIN produced earnings gains and welfare savings, but not always for both groups in each county"(xxv).

"GAIN produced earnings gains for the heads to two-parent families (AFDC-Us) that were about the same in years 3 as in year 2, and welfare savings that were somewhat lower. Butte had the most impressive earnings impacts, which were large and sustained over time"(x1viii).

"GAIN has a positive impact on AFDC-UP experimentals’ rate of employment in years 3 in three counties (Butte, Los Angeles, and Riverside). However, it did not reduce the proportion on welfare"(x1viii).

Interim Cost-Benefit Findings:

"For all six counties combined, county welfare departments spent an average of $2,899 per experimental within the five years after orientation"(x1).

"GAIN expenditures were heaviest for job search, basic education, and vocational training and post-secondary education"(x1ii).

"The total cost of GAIN varied widely by county, ranging from under $4,000 per experimental in four counties (Butte, Riverside, San Diego and Tulare) to almost $6,000 or more in two counties (Alameda and Los Angeles)"(x1iii).

"The average net cost of all GAIN and non-GAIN services per experimental was $3,422 for all six counties combined, but varied widely across the counties"(x1iii).

"The findings across the six counties point to GAIN’s potential to produce net financial gains for both education subgroups. However, different strategies may involve important trade-offs between the welfare sample and government budget"(x1vii).

"GAIN’s benefit-cost results for AFDC-Ups show a large positive effect from the welfare sample perspective in Butte only, and a modest positive return on the government’s investment in Butte and Riverside only"(1).

"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).