Citation
Butler, D., Alson, J., Bloom, D., Deitch, V., Hill, A., Hsueh, J., Jacobs, E., Kim, S., McRoberts, R., & Redcross, C. (2012). What strategies work for the hard-to-employ? Final results of the Hard-to-Employ demonstration and evaluation project and selected sites from the Employment Retention and Advancement project. (OPRE report 2012-08). Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. [Minnesota Tier 2]
Highlights
- The study examined the impact of the Minnesota Tier 2 program on employment, earnings, and receipt of public assistance for unemployed single parents.
- The study was a randomized controlled trial. The authors estimated the impact of the Tier 2 program by comparing the outcomes of the treatment and control groups four years after random assignment using data from Minnesota public assistance records and Unemployment Insurance wage records.
- The study found no statistically significant relationships between the Minnesota Tier 2 program and employment, earnings, or receipt of public assistance.
- The quality of causal evidence presented in this report is high for the employment and earnings outcomes because it was based on a well-implemented randomized controlled trial. This means we would be confident that any estimated effects on earnings and employment would be attributable to the Minnesota Tier 2 program, and not to other factors. The public assistance outcomes receive a low rating, which means we would not be confident that any estimated effects on public assistance would be attributable to the Minnesota Tier 2 program; other factors are likely to have contributed. However, the study did not find any statistically significant effects on employment, earnings, or benefit receipt.
Intervention Examined
The Minnesota Tier 2 Program
Features of the Intervention
The Minnesota Tier 2 program was built on the services provided by Tier 1, an existing welfare-to-work program in Hennepin County (Minneapolis). Long-term Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients who had participated in Tier 1 services for 12 months, were unemployed and had not worked in the prior three months, were not participating in education or training, and were not currently being sanctioned were eligible for Tier 2. Clients worked with case managers whose caseloads had been reduced to 25 to 30 cases. Participation in Tier 2 was mandatory and could be enforced by sanctioning TANF benefits. Case managers performed detailed assessments of clients to identify the underlying challenges affecting them and their families and then referred clients to services that addressed those challenges. Clients had access to education or job training programs but were required to work 20 hours per week concurrently with participation in such programs. Clients searched for jobs for up to six weeks, and those still unemployed at the end of that period were placed in either unpaid employment or supported employment in which their paid employment was paired with job coaching or on-the-job training.
Features of the Study
The authors conducted a randomized controlled trial to assess the impact of the Tier 2 program on employment, earnings, and receipt of public assistance. From January 2002 to April 2003, 1,692 eligible Tier 1 recipients were randomly assigned to enroll in Tier 2 or remain in Tier 1; half were randomly assigned to each condition. All sample members were unemployed single parents who had received TANF benefits for at least 12 months. The vast majority of participants were female (93.2 percent), and most were African American (67.8 percent). Nearly 70 percent had received Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) or TANF benefits for more than two years, and about one-third described themselves as suffering from health problems.
The authors analyzed data collected from Minnesota public assistance records and Unemployment Insurance wage records. They estimated the impacts of the Tier 2 program by comparing the adjusted outcomes of the treatment group with the adjusted outcomes of the control group.
Findings
- The study found no statistically significant impact of the Minnesota Tier 2 program on employment or earnings.
- The study found no statistically significant relationship between the Minnesota Tier 2 program and receipt of public assistance.
Considerations for Interpreting the Findings
The authors reported that public assistance data were missing for 177 study participants and did not respond to a query to gather more information. As a result, high attrition is assumed for the public assistance outcomes. In addition, the interim report clarified that the authors ran statistical tests comparing the treatment and comparison groups and found no statistically significant differences in terms of gender, race and ethnicity, age or AFDC/TANF receipt history (going back nine years before randomization). However, these tests were conducted on the original sample presented in the interim report and not the reduced sample presented in the final report. Therefore, these tests are insufficient to determine that the treatment and comparison groups were similar before the intervention.
Causal Evidence Rating
The quality of causal evidence presented in this report is high for the employment and earnings outcomes because it was based on a well-implemented randomized controlled trial. This means we would be confident that any estimated effects on earnings and employment would be attributable to the Minnesota Tier 2 program, and not to other factors. However, the study did not find any statistically significant effects on employment or earnings.
The quality of causal evidence presented in this report is low for the public assistance outcomes because high attrition is assumed and the study did not provide sufficient evidence that the treatment and control groups were equivalent at baseline. This means we would not be confident that any estimated effects on public assistance would be attributable to the Minnesota Tier 2 program; other factors are likely to have contributed. However, the study did not find any statistically significant effects on public benefit receipt.
Additional Sources
LeBlanc, A., Miller, C., Martinson, K., & Azurdia, G. (2007). The Employment Retention and Advancement project: Results from Minnesota’s Tier 2 program. Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.