This report describes the implementation of California's Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs) program in its first two years. According to the CalWORKs welfare-to-work model, immediately following the approval of the aid application, nearly all recipients search for jobs in the context of Job Clubs. For those who do not find employment through job search, an intensive assessment and a sequence of activities follow, to identify and overcome barriers to employment. Implementation in most counties is proceeding more slowly than some observers had hoped, but about as fast as could realistically be expected. County welfare districts (CWDs) face the dual challenge of expanding their capacity to deal with the new, higher, steady-state workload that CalWORKs entails and handling the much larger one-time surge of old cases as they move through the system. Providing mandated support services--child care and transportation; education and training; and treatment for alcohol and substance abuse, mental health, and domestic abuse--has been a challenge for most CWDs. To cope with this expanded workload, they have made different capacity-building decisions. The slow pace of movement through the system is worrisome, however, given the five-year lifetime limit that aid recipients face. Finally, those who have found jobs often do not earn enough to move them completely off aid and toward self-sufficiency. Additional post-employment services appear to be needed.. (MP)

In Welfare Reform, Jeffrey Grogger and Lynn Karoly assemble evidence from numerous studies to assess how welfare reform has affected behavior. To broaden our understanding of this wide-ranging policy reform, the authors evaluate the evidence in relation to an economic model of behavior.

Examines the effects of the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs) program on work activity participation rates of welfare recipients, welfare caseloads, and outcomes for welfare leavers. While the CalWORKs reforms appear to have been responsible for some of the uniform improvement in outcomes shown by the analysis, the robust economy and other policy changes were probably also important.

Backlash against Welfare Mothers is a forceful examination of how and why a state-level revolt against welfare, begun in the late 1940s, was transformed into a national-level assault that destroyed a critical part of the nation's safety net, with tragic consequences for American society. With a wealth of original research, Ellen Reese puts recent debates about the contemporary welfare backlash into historical perspective. She provides a closer look at these early antiwelfare campaigns, showing why they were more successful in some states than others and how opponents of welfare sometimes targeted Puerto Ricans and Chicanos as well as blacks for cutbacks. Her research reveals both the continuities and changes in American welfare opposition from the late 1940s to the present. Reese brings new evidence to light that reveals how large farmers and racist politicians, concerned about the supply of cheap labor, appealed to white voters' racial resentments and stereotypes about unwed mothers, blacks, and immigrants in the 1950s. She then examines congressional failure to replace the current welfare system with a more popular alternative in the 1960s and 1970s, which paved the way for national assaults on welfare. Taking a fresh look at recent debates on welfare reform, she explores how and why politicians competing for the white vote and right-wing think tanks promoting business interests appeased the Christian right and manufactured consent for cutbacks through a powerful, racially coded discourse. Finally, through firsthand testimonies, Reese vividly portrays the tragic consequences of current welfare policies and calls for a bold new agenda for working families.

"In this impeccably researched book, Rebecca Blank demonstrates that government aid has been far more effective in reducing poverty than most people think. It Takes a Nation argues that federal, state, and local assistance should go hand in hand with private efforts at community development and personal empowerment and change."--Jacket