Regulacje i polityka gospodarcza · 2.11.1999

Submission for OMB Review: Welfare to Work Voucher Program Evaluation

The Department of Veterans Administration (VA) and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Independent Agencies Appropriation Act of 1999 established the Section 8 Welfare to Work Vouchers Program to help eligible families make the transfer from welfare to work and set aside 283 million to achieve the effect. The same act permitted HUD to use up to one percent of that amount to conduct detailed evaluations of the effect of providing tenant-based rental assistance to eligible families on their ability to obtain and retain employment. Review of existing literature yields scant scholarly or governmental research on the impact of the availability of assisted housing on employment. The Department determined that the most effective way to gauge the impact of Welfare to Work Vouchers was to establish an experimental situation in which a small number of communities allocated vouchers among eligible participants by random assignment. An experimental group would receive the voucher, and a control group would not. Both groups would be surveyed over time to test whether the presence of the voucher had an independent effect on the ability of families to obtain and retain emplo