This qualitative study explores the welfare recipients’ experiences of and attitudes toward the welfare benefit system in Hong Kong. A sample of 19 welfare recipients from six main recipient groups was interviewed, some twice. This study finds that the recipients have strong aspirations to exit the welfare benefit system. The welfare application process is painful; they are strongly stigmatized...

"This paper investigates if the location choices made by immigrants when they arrive in the United States are influenced by the interstate dispersion in welfare benefits. Income-maximizing behavior implies that foreign-born welfare recipients unlike their native-born counterparts, may be clustered in the states that offer the highest benefits. The empirical analysis indicates that immigrant wel...

OBJECTIVES We examined whether Jobs First, a multicenter randomized trial of a welfare reform program conducted in Connecticut, demonstrated increases in employment, income, and health insurance relative to traditional welfare (Aid to Families with Dependent Children). We also investigated if higher earnings and employment improved mortality of the participants. METHODS We revisited the Jobs ...

The 1996 welfare reform legislation expanded the use of sanctions under the assumption that welfare recipients can comply with work requirements and that they can calculate the costs and benefits of compliance. This research tests the validity of these assumptions through a recordand survey-based study of California welfare recipients. The article questions the validity of the assumptions, find...

The welfare reform goal of moving mothers who rely on welfare into private-sector employment cannot be achieved only by changes in public policy. Employment rates reflect the job qualifications of individuals, obstacles to work outside the home, the attractiveness of available jobs, and the capacity of the labor market to absorb new workers at particular skill levels. This article examines how ...

Recent research suggests that welfare attitudes may be shaped by negative perceptions of blacks, suggesting an implicit racialization of the policy. But what might inhibit the racialization of welfare? In this vein, research indicating that education facilitates tolerance suggests that negative racial perceptions and welfare attitudes may be less related among the educated. However, education m...

In Belgium, welfare agencies receive a subsidy to employ welfare recipients for a period sufficiently long to entitle them to unemployment benefits. This work experience program is called Social Employment (SE). We investigate the effect of SE on the exit rate from welfare. We propose a grouping/IV estimator of the SE effect that eliminates selection bias. The estimator is consistent, even if t...