Five years after

by Daniel Friedlander

With welfare reforms currently being tested in almost every state, and plans for a comprehensive federal overhaul on the horizon, it has become increasingly important to understand how policy changes are likely to affect the lives of welfare recipients. One of the most influential contributions to the welfare reform debate came in the 1980s with a series of social experiments run by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation to evaluate a select group of state welfare-to-work programs. Five Years After, a follow-up study conducted by MDRC, provides the first analysis of the long-term consequences of large-scale employment programs for welfare recipients, using newly collected data from evaluations performed in Baltimore, San Diego, Virginia, and Arkansas. Daniel Friedlander and Gary Burtless review the distinctive goals and procedures of each program. They then examine five years of follow-up data to determine whether the initial impact on employment, earnings, and welfare costs h