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Guide
to Effective Programs
for Children and Youth |
Minnesota Family
Investment Program
OVERVIEW
MFIP was a pilot welfare reform program designed to function as a replacement for the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program in certain Minnesota counties between 1994 and 1998. The program was designed to provide participants with generous financial rewards for work, mandatory employment services, and various other services that were variations on AFDC services. A large experimental study indicated that participation in MFIP led to several positive parent and child outcomes for families that had experienced long-term welfare receipt. For single mothers in these families, participation in MFIP produced more positive employment, earnings, marriage, and domestic violence impacts than for their peers in the control group receiving AFDC. The children in these families experienced more positive educational and behavioral impacts than their control group peers in families receiving AFDC. There were far fewer significantly positive outcomes for families that had received welfare for shorter periods of time.
The Minnesota Family Investment Program (MFIP), implemented between 1994 and 1998, was designed to function as a replacement for the traditional Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program (Knox, Miller, & Gennetian, 2000). The program differed from AFDC in that it provided (a) generous financial rewards for work through enhanced earnings disregards, (b) mandatory participation in employment-focused services for parents who were not working full-time and had experienced “long-term” welfare receipt, and (c) simplified rules and procedures for the other social services participants received (Gennetian & Miller, 2000). MFIP also provided child care assistance directly to participating families’ child care providers, changed asset and vehicle limits, and equalized cash assistance eligibility rules between single- and two-parent families.
MFIP was designed to provide slightly different services according to whether the participant family was a long-term welfare recipient or a short(er)-term welfare recipient. Families that had already experienced “long-term receipt” (over 24 months during the 36-month period prior to program entry) were immediately required to participate in the employment-focused services. Shorter-term recipients and new applicants to welfare were not required to participate in these services at the debut of the program, but could be required to if they later became “long-term recipients.” Only families with children under the age of 1 or in which the parent was working 30 or more hours per week were exempt from these mandatory services. Financial sanctions were levied for non-exempt families that did not participate.
Study 1: Gennetian, L. A., & Miller, C. (2000). Reforming welfare and rewarding work: Final report on the Minnesota Family Investment Program, Vol. 2: Effects on children. New York: Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation.
Approach: The families in the study were randomly assigned to either MFIP or AFDC. There were no time limits on welfare benefits for the AFDC or MFIP groups. Researchers followed the two groups over time and compared their employment, welfare receipt, earnings, income, and poverty outcomes.
Results: Program impacts differed by participant characteristics. Compared with families receiving AFDC, single mothers and children in MFIP who were long-term welfare recipients experienced notably positive impacts. For the long-term recipients, participation in MFIP led to significant increases in parental employment and earnings, a decline in domestic abuse, and a small increase in the marriage rate. Additionally, MFIP children in these families exhibited fewer behavior problems, performed better in school, were more engaged in school, and were more likely to have continuous health care coverage than children in AFDC. In the short(er)-term welfare receipt families, children experienced more continuous health care coverage and their single mothers were slightly more likely to work than their AFDC counterparts.
It should be noted that participation in MFIP enabled children to experience more stable child care, which may have influenced these outcomes as well.
Study 2: Gennetian, L. A., Miller, C., & Smith, J. (2005). Turning welfare into a work support: Six-year impacts on parents and children from the Minnesota Investment Program.
Evaluated population: 14,000 families in need of social welfare in three urban and four rural Minnesota counties (as described for Study 1).
Approach: This report of the MFIP evaluated the long-term impacts of the program six years after study entry. The program was not designed to be temporary, but was effectively discontinued in 1998. This report, therefore, is designed to indicate whether the impacts of the program are lasting or whether they have faded since the program’s termination. The report was particularly interested in MFIP’s six year impacts on work, income, childbearing, and children’s school achievement. Researchers were primarily interested in evaluating if MFIP provided families with an increase in employment or self-sufficiency.
Results: Among all single-parent families, MFIP increased employment, earnings, welfare receipt, and income into the fourth year of the follow-up, but then impacts waned. For the most disadvantaged single-parent families, MFIP’s economic impacts and impacts on children’s school achievement persisted until year 6. The most disadvantaged single parents are determined by several factors, including those who have received welfare payments in at least 11 of the 12 months prior to random assignment, were not employed in the year before random assignment, and did not have a high school diploma or GED, as well as a subgroup comprised of families with all three characteristics. Among the full sample of single-parent families, children’s elementary school achievement was not effected by MFIP.
For two-parent families, MFIP reduced employment among women through Year 4 of the follow-up period. As with the single-parent sample, MFIP had no impact on elementary school achievement of young children.
Gennetian, L. A., & Miller, C. (2000). Reforming welfare and rewarding work: Final report on the Minnesota Family Investment Program, Vol. 2: Effects on children. New York: Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation.
Knox, V. W., Miller, C., & Gennetian, L. A. (2000). Reforming welfare and rewarding work: A summary of the final report on the Minnesota Family Investment Program [On-line]. Retrieved from the World Wide Web: http://www.mdrc.org.
Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation’s MFIP website: http://www.mdrc.org/project_8_12.html
Gennetian, L. A., Miller, C., & Smith, J. (2005). Turning welfare into a work support: Six-year impacts on parents and children from the Minnesota Investment Program.
Halle, T., Zaff, J., Calkins, J., & Margie, N. G. (2000). Background for community-level work on school readiness: A review of definitions, assessments, and investment strategies. Part II: Reviewing the literature on contributing factors to school readiness. Washington, DC: Child Trends, Inc.
Zaslow, M.J., Brooks, J. L., Moore, K. A., Morris, P., Tout, K., & Redd, Z. (2001). Impacts on children in experimental studies of welfare-to-work programs. Washington, DC: Child Trends.
Program categorized in this guide according to the
following:
Evaluated participant ages: 2-9 / Program age ranges in the Guide: 0-5, 6-11
Program components: Child care/ECE, Clinic/provider-based, Parent/family
Measured outcomes: Education/cognitive, Behavioral problems
Program information last updated 9/22/06.
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© Child Trends 2003 |