Creating New Hope: Implementation Of A Program To Reduce Poverty And Reform Welfare

Abstract

The New Hope Project in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was developed to reduce poverty and reform welfare by providing adults who are willing to work least 30 hours per week with the following: help obtaining a job, including time-limited, minimum wage community service jobs (CSJ) if full-time employment was not otherwise available; a monthly earnings supplement that raised most participants' income above the poverty level; subsidized health insurance; and subsidized child care. New Hope's context, implementation, impacts on key outcomes, and costs were assessed through an independent evaluation based on a treatment-control group design. During the year following random assignment to the New Hope program, approximately three-fourths of applicants accepted into the program worked full time and claimed a program benefit. Of the 24% of New Hope participants who took a CSJ job, approximately 60% eventually entered full-time employment. (Fifty-eight additional tables/figures are included. Appended are the following: data sources; a list of donors for the pilot and full programs; design of the New Hope benefits package; methodology of the New Hope neighborhood survey; selected characteristics of the New Hope full sample at random assignment; selected results of the MacArthur Child and Family Study; and 22 additional tables/figures. The bibliography lists 43 references.) (MN)

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