Publications

This report examines the implementation of the community service jobs component of Wisconsin's Temporary Aid for Needy Families program during the program’s first three years of operation.

Based on a study of nine adult literacy programs in public libraries, this report examines student characteristics, participation patterns, and new strategies to raise student persistence.

This latest MDRC how-to guide identifies program features and practices that can help states better target financial work incentives and maximize their effectiveness.

Drawing upon the experiences of the lead community organizations during the initiative’s implementation phase, this third and final NJI report explores the feasibility and effectiveness of NJI’s novel approach to neighborhood revitalization.

This paper begins to fill a void in the understanding of residential mobility in low-income communities by examining intended and actual out-migration patterns of a cohort of residents of five public housing developments.

This paper illustrates how to design an experimental sample for measuring the effects of educational programs when whole schools are randomized to a program and control group. It addresses such issues as what number of schools should be randomized, how many students per school are needed, and what is the best mix of program and control schools.

The Opening Doors initiative is designed to help low-wage workers, at-risk youth, and recipients of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) earn college credentials as the pathway to better jobs and higher earnings. Concentrating on a program implemented in California, this report supplements efforts from an earlier Opening Doors focus group study to gain insights from low-income students on the factors that affect their ability to enroll in school and earn a college credential while balancing work and parenting responsibilities.

Aiming to significantly increase employment and economic self-sufficiency among public housing residents since its inception in 1997, the Jobs-Plus Community Revitalization Initiative for Public Housing Families created and operated on-site job centers at each of seven public housing developments in six cities across the nation.

This report studies the post-welfare experiences of three groups — two that received federal housing assistance when they left the welfare rolls and an unassisted group that did not — to see how they differ with respect to their labor market outcomes, material well-being, and propensity to return to the welfare rolls or rely on other forms of public assistance.

Responding to the growing need to understand whether people who have left the welfare rolls since the passage of the 1996 welfare reform law are able to find and keep jobs and earn enough to lift their families out of poverty, this study compares two groups of single-parent welfare recipients — one that left the welfare rolls in 1996, and a similar group who exited welfare in 1998 —investigating their background characteristics, their employment and earnings experiences, and their material well-being.

Children who live in public housing are commonly thought to be at greater risk of experiencing academic and behavioral problems than other low-income children, but this paper is among the few to explore empirically the characteristics and circumstances of these children.