The Prevalence of Education and Training Activities among Welfare and Food Stamp Recipients

oft-stated goal of breaking the poverty cycle is providing disadvantaged citizens with access to the education, training, and work experience that they need to qualify for and keep well-paying jobs. At present, little is known about the frequency with which adults invest in new skills beyond their early twenties. Nor do we know if the adults being pushed most by public policy to upgrade their skills—recipients of government transfers—invest more in skill building than other adults. What sorts of skill building are they choosing, and how often? Recent congressional action has increased the incentives for welfare recipients to seek new skills, while altering the system for providing education and training services. In 1996, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) replaced Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), a federal-state cash assistance entitlement for low-income families, with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a block-grant program that imposes federal limits on cash assistance receipt and increasingly stringent work requirements for welfare recipients. PRWORA also substantially increases states' flexibility to design their own welfare-to-work programs and make their own spending decisions regarding training and employment services. Legislation in 1997 created the Welfare-to-Work Grants Program, which provides funds to local programs that assist the hardest-to-employ TANF recipients and noncustodial parents of TANF children. In 1998, the Workforce Investment Act overhauled national employment and training policy generally, requiring states to provide all employment and training services through "one-stop" career centers. Other important changes related to work have been occurring for both families and other low-income adults. PRWORA reduced food stamp benefit amounts and excludes most legal immigrants from the program. Able-bodied adults without dependents may only receive three months' worth of food stamp benefits over three years unless they are working 20 hours per week or in low labor demand areas. In addition, many states have restricted or eliminated General Assistance payments for portions of the low-income population over the last 10 years, adding to pressures for recipients to become selfsufficient through employment (Gallagher 1999). Assessing the impact of these changes on participation in education and training programs requires a baseline measure of how often disadvantaged populations engaged in skill-building activities before reform. The first wave of the National Survey of America's Families (NSAF), a nationally representative survey of households that collects a wide range of economic, demographic, and program participation data, provides just such a baseline. It shows that even before national reform, a greater share of welfare recipients— around one in four—invested in new work The Prevalence of Education and Training Activities among Welfare and Food Stamp Recipients