Abstract
We present findings from a nonexperimental evaluation of an employment program in which both partners in young, low-income, primarily African-American couples simultaneously participated. Mothers participating in the couples program had larger immediate gains in employment and earnings and decreases in TANF receipt following their exit from the program relative to mothers who received employment assistance as individuals. Fathers showed similar although weaker results. These immediate benefits appeared to be driven by higher rates of program completion among couples’ participants. Couples in which both partners completed the program experienced the largest quarterly earnings gains, and couples with greater earnings’ gains were more likely to still be together one year after the program ended. Mothers’ earnings gains eroded in the two years following program completion and many reported new pregnancies and problems with child care. We suggest directions for future programs and encourage future studies to consider the range of mechanisms associated with a couples focus, including potential motivational benefits and unintended consequences.
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Notes
Minor participants, under age 18 at enrollment, were excluded from the evaluation.
Although at least one parent of the participating couples was initially required to be receiving TANF, program coordinators relaxed this requirement due to recruitment challenges. Ultimately, two-thirds of mothers who enrolled in the FFP program had received TANF in the prior year.
The high percentage of couples who are not married nor cohabiting but committed to each other is likely to be found in other programs serving similar populations. The Fragile Families study (a representative sample of all nonmarital births in cities with populations over 200,000), found that over two-thirds of mothers (69%) were in romantic relationships when their child was three years old, either with the child’s father (47%) or with a new partner (22%; Bzostek et al. 2006).
The Workforce Investment Act replaced the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) program on July 1, 2000, the month after we stopped selecting participants for the evaluation.
The models for the Any UI Earnings and TANF Receipt outcomes are conditional fixed effects logit models. Because these models exclude any cases that do not change status (e.g., cases that remain employed; cases that remain unemployed) between quarters, the sample sizes are smaller for these outcomes in the fixed effects models than in models without fixed effects. For the Level of UI Earnings, the sample size is the same across models because all cases are used in an OLS model with fixed effects. For the earnings outcomes, we also specified a multilevel model with random effects. The results were highly similar and are available from the authors.
Calendar time was measured as the number of months after July, 1997 that the participant enrolled in the program. To allow for non-linear effects of calendar time, both a linear and square term were included.
We also estimated the models using kernel matching, local linear regression, and nearest-neighbour matching, which generated comparable results.
The full set of results is available from the authors upon request.
In the propensity score matching analysis for fathers, seven cases were excluded due to a lack of common support in the comparison of FFP with other JFY fathers; just two cases were excluded in the analysis with JTPA fathers. The radius caliper was increased from 0.01 to 0.05 in the analysis with other JFY fathers to preserve sample size.
Because some fathers’ post-program trajectories appear non-linear (see again Fig. 2), we also estimated quadratic and cubic forms of post-program change. These models do not alter the findings regarding employment and earnings gains at program exit and do not clarify the pattern of post-program slopes associated with program participation (details available from the authors).
JTPA parents received a variety of employment and training services from a wide range of providers. Although the dates and types of service enrollments and program termination dates were provided, the JTPA MIS system does not indicate whether participants showed up for and completed services or dropped out before completing them.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the research assistants and study staff who were supported by the U.S. Department of Labor, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (ASPE/DHHS grant 00ASPE345A), the Lloyd A. Frye Foundation, and Jobs for Youth/Chicago: Pavit Anand, Gina Barclay-McLaughlin, Jiuping Chen, Kelly Johnson, Wrenetha Julion, Aparna Khare, Jennifer Leaver, Ye Luo, Chanpreet Mehta, Farhan Qureshy, Maria Rodriguez, David Seith, Robin Shirer Högnäs, Paul Steinbeck, Vladimir Vojvodic and Annie Zhang. We also thank Dave Gruenfelder of the Illinois Department of Human Services, Robert Goerge, Bong Jo Lee and John Dilts of Chapin Hall Center for Children, Jennifer Parker of the Illinois Network of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies, Gerry Snyder and Tom Revane of the Illinois Department of Employment Security, and Jack Connelly, Robert Barnett, Mary Carroll, Nina Hardy, Greg Johnson, Joyce Mister, Therese McMahon, Robert Gaither, Robert Hern and many other staff at Jobs for Youth/Chicago, all of whom provided essential assistance in the assembly of data for this research. The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect those who provided funding or assistance to this project.
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Gordon, R.A., Heinrich, C.J. The potential of a couples approach to employment assistance: results of a nonexperimental evaluation. Rev Econ Household 7, 133–158 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-009-9056-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150-009-9056-7