With welfare reforms currently being tested in almost every state, and plans for a comprehensive federal overhaul on the horizon, it has become increasingly important to understand how policy changes are likely to affect the lives of welfare recipients. One of the most influential contributions to the welfare reform debate came in the 1980s with a series of social experiments run by the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation to evaluate a select group of state welfare-to-work programs.

Five Years After, a follow-up study conducted by MDRC, provides the first analysis of the long-term consequences of large-scale employment programs for welfare recipients, using newly collected data from evaluations performed in Baltimore, San Diego, Virginia, and Arkansas.

Daniel Friedlander and Gary Burtless review the distinctive goals and procedures of each program. They then examine five years of follow-up data to determine whether the initial impact on employment, earnings, and welfare costs held up over time. Surprisingly, although all the programs succeeded in helping people find jobs, they did not automatically lessen welfare dependency, and effects on welfare varied substantially.

The Baltimore intervention, which alone led to better-paying jobs, had the least effect on reducing AFDC costs. The authors explain this apparent paradox by making a central distinction between short- and long-term welfare recipients. In those terms, they identify the critical questions ahead: Can more costly education and training programs succeed in helping the particularly disadvantaged?

Can aspirations to improve the financial status of the poor and calls to trim government budgets coexist as compatible aspects of welfare reform?

Five Years After's innovative analysis of long-term employment and welfare behavior carefully illuminates these crucial issues. With welfare reform high on the national agenda, this volume ends speculation about the viability of the first generation of employment programs for welfare recipients, delineates the hard choices that must be made among competing approaches, and provides a well-documented foundation for building more comprehensive programs for the next generation.

Five Years After will be essential reading for policymakers and scholars searching for a better way to assist the nation's most disadvantaged families.