IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wop/jopovw/11.html

Measuring Program Impacts On Earnings and Employment

Author

Listed:
  • Robert Kornfeld
  • Howard S. Bloom

Abstract

This paper attempts to determine whether wage records reported quarterly by employers to state Unemployment Insurance (UI) agencies provide a valid alternative to more costly retrospective sample surveys of individuals as the basis for measuring the labor market impacts of employment and training programs for low-income persons. This question is important because of the widespread and growing use of UI wage records for this purpose. We base our analysis on UI data and survey data for a sample of 12,318 low-income adults and out-of-school youths from 12 U.S. cities that were sites in the National Job-Training Partnership Act (JTPA) Study. The National JTPA Study was a Congressionally-mandated randomized experiment designed to measure the labor market impacts of JTPA programs for low-income persons. Our comparison of UI data and survey data indicates that for adult men, adult women, female youths, and all but a small subgroup of male youths, impact estimates based on UI data were comparable to those obtained from survey data, even though average earnings according to the survey data were somewhat higher than they were according to UI wage records. We therefore conclude that UI wage records can provide a valid alternative to surveys for measuring program impacts on many, but not all, groups of low-income persons.

Suggested Citation

  • Robert Kornfeld & Howard S. Bloom, 1997. "Measuring Program Impacts On Earnings and Employment," JCPR Working Papers 11, Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:wop:jopovw:11
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bruce D. Meyer, 1995. "Lessons from the U.S. Unemployment Insurance Experiments," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 33(1), pages 91-131, March.
    2. Michael J. Puma & Nancy R. Burstein, 1994. "The national evaluation of the food stamp employment and training program," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 13(2), pages 311-330.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Carolyn J. Heinrich & Rachel Gordon, 2002. "Is a Family-focused Program More Effective in Helping Low-Income Parents Enter the Workforce? Insights from a Multimethod Evaluation of the Jobs for Youth/Full Family Partnership Demonstration," JCPR Working Papers 271, Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research.
    2. Carolyn J. Heinrich & Peter R. Mueser & Kenneth R. Troske, 2005. "Welfare to Temporary Work: Implications for Labor Market Outcomes," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(1), pages 154-173, February.
    3. Christopher Jepsen & Kenneth Troske & Paul Coomes, 2014. "The Labor-Market Returns to Community College Degrees, Diplomas, and Certificates," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(1), pages 95-121.
    4. Andrew Dyke & Carolyn J. Heinrich & Peter R. Mueser & Kenneth R. Troske & Kyung-Seong Jeon, 2006. "The Effects of Welfare-to-Work Program Activities on Labor Market Outcomes," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(3), pages 567-608, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Larry L. Orr, 2015. "2014 Rossi Award Lecture," Evaluation Review, , vol. 39(2), pages 167-178, April.
    2. Jeffrey Smith, 2000. "A Critical Survey of Empirical Methods for Evaluating Active Labor Market Policies," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 136(III), pages 247-268, September.
    3. Cockx, Bart & Robin, Stéphane R. & Goebel, Christian, 2006. "Income Support Policies for Part-Time Workers: A Stepping-Stone to Regular Jobs? An Application to Young Long-Term Unemployed Women in Belgium," IZA Discussion Papers 2432, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Nicola Pavoni & G. L. Violante, 2007. "Optimal Welfare-to-Work Programs," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(1), pages 283-318.
    5. Burt S. Barnow & Jeffrey Smith, 2015. "Employment and Training Programs," NBER Chapters, in: Economics of Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States, Volume 2, pages 127-234, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Phillips, David C., 2014. "Getting to work: Experimental evidence on job search and transportation costs," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 72-82.
    7. Paul L. Burgess & Stuart A. Low, 1998. "How do Unemployment Insurance and Recall Expectations Affect on-the-job Search among Workers Who Receive Advance Notice of Layoff?," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 51(2), pages 241-252, January.
    8. Bruno Crépon & Muriel Dejemeppe & Marc Gurgand, 2005. "Counseling the unemployed: does it lower unemployment duration and recurrence?," Working Papers halshs-00590769, HAL.
    9. Peter Lindert, 2003. "Why The Welfare State Looks Like a Free Lunch," Working Papers 59, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    10. Barnow, Burt S. & Greenberg, David, 2013. "Replication issues in social experiments: lessons from US labor market programs," Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 46(3), pages 239-252.
    11. Ruud de Mooij, 2004. "Towards efficient unemployment insurance in the Netherlands," CPB Memorandum 100, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    12. Gerard J. van den Berg & Bas van der Klaauw & Jan C. van Ours, 2004. "Punitive Sanctions and the Transition Rate from Welfare to Work," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(1), pages 211-241, January.
    13. Nitika Bagaria & Barbara Petrongolo & John Van Reenen, 2015. "Can helping the sick hurt the able? Incentives, information and disruption in a disability-related welfare reform," NBER Working Papers 21163, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Barbara Petrongolo, 2007. "What Are the Long-Term Effects of UI? Evidence from the UK JSA Reform," CEP Discussion Papers dp0841, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    15. Deborah A. Cobb-Clark & Andrew Leigh, 2009. "Long-Term Unemployment in the ACT," CEPR Discussion Papers 603, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    16. Manning, Alan, 2009. "You can't always get what you want: The impact of the UK Jobseeker's Allowance," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(3), pages 239-250, June.
    17. Christine Erhel & Jérôme Gautié & Bernard Gazier, 1999. "Qu'a-t-on appris sur le lien salaire/ emploi grâce aux débats sur les politiques de l'emploi ?," Cahiers d'Économie Politique, Programme National Persée, vol. 34(1), pages 257-287.
    18. James S. Costain, 1998. "On the quantitative importance of wage bargaining models," Economics Working Papers 262, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    19. repec:pri:cepsud:80rosen is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Marike Knoef & Jan C. van Ours & Jan C. van Ours, 2014. "How to Stimulate Single Mothers on Welfare to Find a Job; Evidence from a Natural Experiment," CESifo Working Paper Series 4804, CESifo.
    21. van den Berg, G. & van der Klaauw, B. & van Ours, J.C., 1998. "Punitive sanctions and the transition from welfare to work," Discussion Paper 1998-56, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wop:jopovw:11. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Thomas Krichel (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/jcuchus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.