David H. Greenberg

A META-ANALYSIS OF GOVERNMENT- SPONSORED TRAINING PROGRAMS

This study uses meta-analysis to synthesize findings from 31 evaluations of 15 voluntary government-funded training programs for the disadvantaged that operated between 1964 and 1998. On average, the earnings effects of the evaluated programs seem to have been largest for women, quite modest for men, and negligible for youths. For men and women, the earnings effects of training appear to have persisted for at least several years after the training was complete. Classroom skills training was apparently effective in increasing earnings, but basic education was not. There is no evidence that more expensive training programs performed better than less expensive ones. Although the United States has more than three decades of experience in running training programs, the programs do not appear to have become more effective over time.

Teacher Mobility and Allocation

The theories of human capital and internal labor markets are used to analyze teacher mobility. With data for the San Diego school system, we find that (1) since teaching assignments within school systems do not differ in terms of salary, internal mobility of teachers is governed by such nonpecuniary differences as student socioeconomic status (SES). As a result, (a) new teachers tend to be placed in low SES schools; (b) teachers tend move toward and to stay in higher SES schools. (2) As a consequence, higher SES schools have faculties with relatively greater experience and educational attainment. The correlation between these teacher characteristics and student achievement reflects, therefore, mutual causation.

Research utilization in policymaking: A tale of two series (of social experiments)

This paper is an exploratory attempt to view the role that social experiments in general, and the income maintenance experiments and work|welfare demonstrations in particular, have played in the policy process through the lens provided by the knowledge utilization literature. In addition to suggesting that the decision to conduct a social experiment is rarely, if ever, made according to an essentially rational paradigm, this framework helps highlight the range of uses to which findings from social experiments can be put and the circumstances under which various types of uses are more or less likely. Specifically, the knowledge utilization literature suggests that rather than having the dramatic, decisive effects on policy choices that their promoters have often envisioned, social experiments are more likely to affect policy in a variety of subtle ways.

The Sensitivity of Male Labor Supply Estimates to Choice of Assumptions

Abstract : The task is an analysis of the traditional labor supply model using several competing methodologies. The approach is a step-by-step exploration of alternative labor supply estimating equations that attempts to identify the independent (marginal) effect of each particular change in the form of these equations. By systematically exploring what difference each of these changes makes to the parameter estimates, one can isolate which factors strongly affect estimated response parameters. Results from existing research can then be evaluated within a larger context, and future research can concentrate on resolving those methodological issues that do make a difference.

The Leisure Bias in Cost-Benefit Analyses of Employment and Training Programs

Although increases in earnings that result from Employment and Training (E&T) programs typically come at the cost of losses of leisure to participants, this is almost never taken into account in cost-benefit analyses of E&T programs. This paper develops a method for adjusting for this bias and illustrates how the method can be used to reassess findings from earlier E&T cost-benefit analyses. Results in the paper suggest that the bias from ignoring lost leisure is likely to be sizable unless the E&T program that is subject to cost-benefit analysis increases earnings mainly by raising wage rates or participant reservation wages are near zero. Ignoring the bias will favor E&T programs that emphasize increases in hours of work by focusing on job search or work requirements at the expense of programs that increase wage rates through investments in human capital.

Meta-Evaluation: Discovering What Works Best in Welfare Provision

Numerous programmes designed to encourage welfare recipients to move into work and off benefit have been evaluated in the United States. Many have randomly assigned potential participants into ‘experimental’ and ‘control’ groups to generate unbiased estimates of the effectiveness of the programmes. The results of the evaluations have been selectively influential in shaping policy developments on both sides of the Atlantic, but a thorough understanding of the diversity of experience has been lacking. Applying meta-analysis techniques to a specially constructed database of evaluations in over 50 US sites, this article reports on the first programme-level, systematic meta-evaluation of welfare-to-work programmes. The results confirm the superiority of approaches that prioritize immediate work over human-capital investment but reveal that caseload characteristics and local environment can be equally important as or even more important than programme design. The article concludes with a discussion of the potential and limitations of meta-evaluation.

The dissemination and utilization of welfare-to-work experiments in state policymaking

Abstract This paper reports the results of a telephone survey of state-level officials as to the influence of evaluations of three state welfare innovations: Californias GAIN, New Yorks CAP, and Floridas Project Independence. The three experiments were known to those interviewed, yet they did not have dramatic, decisive effects on policymaking. However, GAIN and CAP appear to have influenced policymaking in less dramatic and more subtle respects. Much more important than empirical findings about the effects of tested programs was information about how these programs actually operated in the field along with evidence that the policies tested in welfare-to-work experiments were logically consistent (that is, there was no obvious reason to think that they would be unsuccessful), could clear federal waivers, and would not encounter major political resistance.

Explaining variation in the effects of welfare-to-work programs.

Evaluations of government-funded training programs often combine results from similar operations in multiple sites. Findings inevitably vary. It is common to relate site-to-site variations in outcomes to variations in program design, participant characteristics, and the local environment. Frequently, such connections are constructed in a narrative synthesis of multisite results. This article uses findings from the evaluations of Californias Greater Avenues for Independence (GAIN) program and the National Evaluation of Welfare-to-Work Strategies (NEWWS) to illustrate why it is important to question the legitimacy of such syntheses. The discussion is carried out using a simple multilevel evaluation model that incorporates models of both individual outcomes within sites and variation in program effects across sites. The results indicate that tempting generalizations about GAIN and NEWWS effects are statistically unjustified but that significant progress might be made in identifying the determinants of program effects in future demonstrations with some changes in evaluation strategy.

What Happens To The Effects Of Government-Funded Training Programs Over Time?

This paper applies meta-analytic techniques to evaluations of voluntary training programs to investigate whether impacts of government-funded training programs on earnings grow or deteriorate over time. For adult men and youth, we find some evidence that, after initially increasing, earnings impacts diminish over time. For adult women, in contrast, the evidence suggests that earnings impacts initially grow and then remain undiminished. Given the scarcity of impact estimates for more than three years, we recommend that future studies measure these impacts for a longer period of time. Until this is done, cost-effectiveness assessments of training programs should allow for the possibility that, at least for adult women, earnings impacts might remain stable over time.

The Dynamics of Welfare Fraud: An Econometric Duration Model in Discrete Time

An important source of errors in transfer payments programs is the fraudulent misreporting of earnings received by recipients. We propose a model of the recipients decision to report income and the expected penalties if caught engaging in fraud. We discuss several features of the detection and penalty structures in the AFDC and Food Stamps programs and present estimates of a model of the duration of fraudulent earnings-misreporting episodes. We find that recipients respond to increases in the returns to fraud by lengthening their episodes of misreporting. However, the level of fraudulent activity at any given time is rather low.