General Assistance Recipients and Welfare-to-Work Programs: Evidence from New York City

Abstract

General Assistance (GA) programs are virtually unstudied. Yet, GA programs serve an economically vulnerable, non-trivial population that should be of interest. To begin to address this shortcoming, two welfare-to-work programs, in which GA recipients participated, are studied. Using a quasi-experimental approach, the effect of each program on welfare use and employment is estimated. The results indicate that each program significantly increased welfare exits and that the second program significantly increased employment (employment data was unavailable for the first program).