L.A. County Succeeding in Bid to Get Poor Off Aid

Los Angeles County is making dramatic gains in moving welfare recipients into jobs, increasing their earnings and reducing welfare payments, according to a new study that has inspired optimism here and in Washington.

The study released today by the Manpower Research Development Corp. found that recipients enrolled in the county’s welfare-to-work program, GAIN, or Greater Avenues for Independence, were far more likely to get jobs and earn higher wages than recipients who received no GAIN services.

Under GAIN, recipients are pushed by the county to find jobs quickly. They are provided job search assistance and attend motivational sessions.

The development corporation that made the assessment is a nonprofit organization that researches social issues.

The county was also able to reduce welfare and food stamp costs among the GAIN participants by 8% to 10%.

Although the results are preliminary and cover only a six-month period, researchers said L.A. County’s achievements are among the best ever observed in studies of major welfare-to-work programs in the nation’s biggest cities.

“If the results hold up, Los Angeles will have achieved something few if any previous programs have accomplished,” said lead author Stephen Freedman.

In Orange County, where a welfare-to-work program akin to that of Los Angeles County was instituted in February, no similar study has been done yet. But social services officials say early results are promising.

From January to May, the number of people on welfare in Orange County declined 7.1%, to 26,572. Of that total, about 16,000 were enrolled in the county’s GAIN program. Caseworkers report that about half of those enrolled found jobs within four weeks, said Larry Leaman, the county’s director of social services.

Specific information on Orange County’s GAIN program, though, has not yet been compiled, Leaman said, so it is impossible to draw conclusions about the local welfare-to-work program.

“If you look at the charts, the lines are going down. Nationally and in Orange County as well, welfare caseloads are dropping significantly,” Leaman said.

“The $64,000 question is why. It’s in our opinion a mix of the welfare reform services that have been and are being implemented this year, but we do not have the depth of research to track people once they’re off welfare and know for sure what happens to their earnings. It’s sort of like a doctor who treats somebody for an illness. When the patient stops coming in, we know they’re cured.”

The timing of the Los Angeles study’s release could not have been better. Saturday marks the second anniversary of President Clinton’s signing of historic welfare legislation that reshaped the landscape of public assistance in the nation. For the first time, strict time limits were imposed on states and localities to move large numbers of welfare recipients into jobs.

Perhaps nowhere is the task more daunting than in Los Angeles County, with a 725,000-person welfare caseload that is larger than that of any state except California and New York.

Many officials said Wednesday’s findings offer strong evidence that the federal welfare overhaul is succeeding and that Los Angeles County can serve as a model for other large urban areas.

“The promising news of Los Angeles County’s program is that it can work on a large scale with a diverse and disadvantaged population of families on welfare,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala said in an announcement that accompanied the study’s release. The department helped to fund the study, along with Los Angeles County and the Ford Foundation.

The findings are important for policymakers because most of the study’s single parents fit categories that are considered the toughest challenge.

More than 60% had been on welfare for at least two years and 23% for at least five years; only 38% had been employed in the prior three years, and less than half had a high school diploma or equivalent.

The findings are based on earnings and employment data for about half of the study group of 21,000 adult welfare recipients who entered the county’s GAIN program beginning in April 1996 and were monitored through the end of the year. The study said that 43% of the participants who received GAIN services found jobs, compared to a 32% employment rate for those who did not receive services.

During the same period, earnings for the GAIN participants outpaced those of the control group by 46%, or $1,286 compared to $879. The program reduced welfare costs by about 8% to 10%.

Federal officials are encouraging other states to adopt components of the Los Angeles strategy, which emphasizes putting people to work quickly rather than spending time with education and training.

Change in Strategy

The county changed its approach several years ago after an earlier Manpower Research Development evaluation found that the Los Angeles program was largely ineffective while a work-oriented program in nearby Riverside County was making big gains.

“I think we’ve shown a lot of the skeptics that some of the techniques used successfully by Riverside could work in a large urban area,” said Los Angeles County GAIN program director John Martinelli. “That is significant nationally because a lot of cities are hurting.”

Indeed, the national experience of welfare reform to date has been uneven.

Declines in the number of welfare recipients --now widely viewed as a key measure of success--have been significant at the national level, with rolls dropping 27% nationwide since the law’s enactment two years ago. Over the past five years, the declines have been even more dramatic--41% since January 1993.

But in the nation’s cities, where roughly 78% of welfare recipients live, rolls have declined far more slowly.

And there is evidence that finding jobs for minority mothers living in urban cores still poses an especially thorny if not intractable problem.

The Brookings Institution’s Kate Allen said that poor city populations tend to have few “early entry points” into the job market that are close to home, such as grocery and drugstores and fast food restaurants.

As inner cities have been depleted of their economic vitality and suburbs have prospered, such jobs have moved farther out of reach, Allen said.

Further Study Planned

Researchers say they want to closely explore why the Los Angeles County urban sample--45% Latino; 35% black; 17% white--seems to be faring so well.

One example is Lilian Robertson, a 35-year-old mother of two who has been on and off welfare for 10 years. Robertson entered the GAIN program in June and within a month found a job working as an assembler for the Neutrogena Corp. She attributes a large part of her success to the job search assistance and motivational support she received in the program.

“I felt I was the most unlikely to succeed in my whole class,” said Robertson. “I was really afraid to fail. I would call my GAIN worker, sometimes in tears, and he told me to keep the faith. They offered a lot of encouragement.”

Robertson is by no means rolling in money. She earns $7.50 an hour working the 11:30 p.m.-6:30 a.m. shift. Because her wages are so small, she still qualifies for a small welfare grant and food stamps. But the difference is palpable.

Before getting a job, she had less than $20 left over after cashing her welfare check and paying bills, she said. She would braid hair or collect cans for money and pray. The food ran out long before month’s end.

Nevertheless, many experts are urging a more cautious appraisal of the Los Angeles County findings, noting that the gains have mostly been made as the economy has surged and unemployment has plummeted.

“It’s like making money in a bull market, it’s real easy,” said Gregory Acs, a senior research associate at the Washington-based Urban Institute. “When the jobs dry up and if unemployment should creep above 5% or 6%, will the work-first model work as well? We don’t know. Right now I’m cautiously optimistic about the findings.”.

And local advocates contend that, given the economy, the results ought to be far better.

Indeed, not everyone who has gone through the GAIN program has been as lucky as Robertson. B.J. Bolden, a 44-year-old mother of three children, two of them grown, went through the program last year and said it was mostly a waste of time.

Despite her experience in the insurance field, no one sat down to give her one-on-one counseling or assistance, she said.

Bolden had been attending Los Angeles Trade Technical College to obtain a degree in business administration, but was forced to quit classes when she entered GAIN.

She began looking for a job on her own, which the program allows, and recently landed an interview with an insurance company. But she questions the wisdom of derailing her educational plans.

“They only want to hurry up and get you off the county, not allow you the time to get a job where you can maintain your rent and pay for your food. They don’t want to do that,” she said.

Low Pay for Most

Indeed, the study found that the vast majority of recipients who find employment, like Robertson, continue to receive some level of cash assistance because their jobs pay too little.

This work incentive, a part of California’s CalWORKS program, is intended to demonstrate to recipients that work pays. But it also counts against a federally imposed time limit that bars recipients from receiving aid for more than five years during their lifetime.

County officials concede that moving recipients to self-sufficiency still poses a formidable challenge. The county soon will begin experimenting with a program of post-employment services to upgrade skills, determine education needs, pair off worker-recipients with mentors and mediate disputes between employers and workers to help them keep jobs and get better ones.

The study participants will be followed for two years to determine the program’s long-term effects on employment, earnings, job quality and retention, income and poverty levels and the impact on children.

Times staff writer Esther Schrader contributed to this report.

Welfare Reform

Welfare recipients enrolled in the county’s welfare-to-work program, GAIN, were more likely to find jobs and increase their incomes, according to a study released today covering July through December 1996.

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GAIN CONTROL GROUP Found employment 42.8% 31.9% Average earnings $1,286 $879

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Source: Manpower Demonstration Research Corp.