A task force on welfare reform has proposed that President Clinton impose a two-year limit on public aid and require all recipients to find employment in private industry or be placed in public-service jobs.
The report doesn't say what the government should do if welfare recipients cannot find private employment or if their states lack public-service jobs to accommodate them.Nevertheless, a number of studies suggests that well-designed state welfare reforms can make a difference. Missouri, for example, is conducting a pilot program in Kansas City in which an employer is given a welfare recipient's monthly grant in return for hiring the recipient. That keeps the employer's wage costs down while giving the welfare recipient a job that pays more than the welfare grant.
The Manpower Demonstration Research Corp. of New York City has been tracking and evaluating many of these experiments. Its latest study focuses on Florida's Project Independence, a welfare-to-work program that requires recipients with children over age 3 to take part in adult education and job-skills programs as a condition for getting public aid. Manpower's researchers were encouraged by the fact that Project Independence boosted the first-year employment rates and earnings of many participants and reduced the amount of public aid needed to support them. The gains in earnings were more prevalent among recipients who already were qualified to accept jobs and recipients whose children were age 6 or older.
After one year, the study found that roughly 64 percent of those in the program were still receiving public aid, compared to a public-aid rate of about 69 percent among participants not in Project Independence.
These gains are modest but they do show how states can ease their welfare expenses under the Family Support Act of 1988. That act helps states finance programs to make it easier for single parents to move from welfare to work.
The findings in Florida suggest once again that the chief focus of welfare reform must be on relatively young single parents who lack education and job skills and have young children.
They tend to receive public aid longer. They deserve more intense help because they are likely to be most adversely affected if the Clinton administration moves ahead with a two-year limit on public aid.