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Evaluation of the Welfare to Work Voucher Program
- Report to Congress (March 2004, 231p)
The Welfare to Work Voucher (WtWV) program was initiated
in Fiscal Year 1999 when Congress appropriated $283 million
for tenant-based housing vouchers to help families make the
transition from welfare to work. This appropriation (P.L.
105-276) funded 50,000 new vouchers. The assistance was awarded
initially to 129 local and state housing agencies that presented
reasonable plans for helping eligible families find available
housing and for coordinating these efforts with existing welfare
reform and welfare-to-work efforts.
This research offers powerful new evidence concerning the
effects of tenant-based rental assistance on self-sufficiency.
The experimental design enables one to draw rigorous inferences
about the effects of housing vouchers on family well being,
independent of all other factors affecting the lives of program
participants. Random assignment serves to assure that the
treatment and control groups are well matched on both observed
and unobserved characteristics at the time of their entry
into the study. It thus establishes the strongest possible
foundation for understanding whether housing vouchers can
assist welfare families in achieving greater financial independence
or otherwise improving their lives.
This study is especially timely in light of federal and state
changes in welfare policies over the past decade, reducing
the numbers of families eligible for public assistance and
limiting the time period over which they can receive benefits.
Housing vouchers may help low-income families become employed
and may also help them meet financial needs as they transition
from welfare.
The current report presents interim findings as to the impact
of the WtWV program on the quality of a family’s residential
location, on employment and earnings, and on receipt of public
assistance. The analysis, based on a six-site research sample
of 8,732 families, makes use of outcome measures derived from
tract-level Census data and person-level administrative data.
The impact estimates in this report encompass a follow-up
period that is five quarters in duration for all sites, and
longer for some sites, reflecting the timing of random assignment
and the availability of outcome measures.
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