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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The enactment of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act in 1996 signalled a dramatic shift in the nation’s approach to providing assistance to those among the country’s neediest populations. The concept of welfare in the United States shifted from cash assistance to economic self-sufficiency.
Rural welfare populations possess unique characteristics and face unique circumstances that will affect their ability to achieve the requirements and intent of welfare reform. To build knowledge and research about effective approaches in working with rural populations, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) awarded planning grants to ten states to help develop and study strategies to move rural families from welfare to work.
Although there are extensive bodies of literature both on rural matters and on welfare-related matters, there is relatively little information about rural welfare issues. This report synthesizes available knowledge and, where appropriate, draws inferences from studies about the ways that welfare reform is likely to affect rural welfare to work strategies.
BACKGROUND
Rural America, despite perceptions to the contrary, displays a wide range of cultural and economic diversity and is home to many different economic activities, including farming, mining, manufacturing, and services. Rural areas have populations that are proportionately older, less educated, and more racially homogeneous than urban areas.
In terms of employment, most rural residents have jobs in the service sector. Wages are lower in rural areas than in urban areas. When compared with urban workers, rural workers are more likely to earn minimum wage and more likely to be underemployed.
Rural poverty is more severe, more persistent, and often less visible than urban poverty. As a whole, the rural population in the United States has lower incomes, lower employment rates, and higher poverty levels than urban and suburban populations.
Relatively little information is available about the rural welfare population, but the literature shows that they are slightly more likely to be married and more likely to be working (or at least report working) than their urban counterparts. Welfare participation is lower, and spells on public assistance are shorter in rural areas than in urban ones.
WELFARE REFORM IN RURAL AREAS
Rural communities may face significant barriers in implementing welfare reform because of:
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geographic isolation and population dispersion;
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depressed economies with high levels of unemployment and underemployment;
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spatial inequities in transportation, child care, technology and infrastructure;
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educational attainment and job opportunities and advancement; and
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limited administrative skills and expertise for implementing decentralized programs.
Of the issues facing rural communities under welfare reform, absorbing welfare recipients into rural economies may be the most significant challenge. This challenge is particularly acute because the number and types of jobs available to rural workers are not the same as those available to workers in suburban or urban areas—they have more seasonal jobs, have lower levels of manufacturing and technology jobs, and face geographic dispersion.
WELFARE TO WORK STRATEGIES
Although the present knowledge base to inform welfare to work strategies is vast, the wealth of existing information is largely silent on rural welfare to work strategies. To help inform ACF’s project, we attempted to cull from the literature pertinent lessons about the intersection between key features of rural areas and factors about welfare recipients’ abilities to achieve economic self-sufficiency. Findings are discussed in seven areas, each of which is summarized below.
Rural Economic Development
To successfully move welfare recipients to self-sufficiency, rural communities will need to consider strategies that will generate a sufficient number of good-paying, stable jobs. Creating jobs and fostering economic development are more often achieved when woven into an organized, holistic approach to rural job creation that includes:
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working with employers to create jobs and improve benefits;
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encouraging employers to expand lines of business;
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attracting new employers;
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providing financial capital;
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capturing more local dollars; and
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capturing more global dollars.
Workforce Development
Research indicates that the most successful programs for achieving positive welfare to work outcomes combine the “human capital” approach with a “work first” approach. The primary challenges for welfare to work programs—helping recipients for whom the job search is not successful, helping recipients find better jobs with higher wages, and helping recipients stay employed—are best addressed through a variety of employer- and recipient-focused activities. These include linkages with local employers, support for job search and job readiness endeavors, education and training, soft skills development, unpaid work experience, and publicly funded jobs.
Community Commitment
Both anecdotal and systematic evidence point to the value of community commitment in effecting positive change among disadvantaged populations. Communities that work together and accept responsibility for devising and implementing welfare to work strategies are more likely to experience greater success in helping people achieve economic self-sufficiency.
Transportation
Rural areas present many unique conditions for the transportation challenge in welfare reform. Unlike urban areas, rural areas have fewer jobs available, and they may have greater distances between job sites. With the influx of welfare participants who need transportation to travel to education, training, work experience, or employment locations, providing new transportation options to disadvantaged rural residents will be a critical feature of programs designed to help the poor achieve economic self-sufficiency. Possible options include expanding public transportation, facilitating private vehicle ownership, and using other strategies, such as public school buses, taxi subsidies, vouchers for gasoline, and carpooling.
Child Care
As more and more parents enter the workforce to meet welfare reform requirements, the need for child care will increase, providers may need to expand services during nontraditional hours, and services may be necessary for sick or special needs children. Strategies to expand child care in rural areas include creating apprenticeship/training programs, forming collaboratives to establish child care initiatives, developing child care facilities, and establishing incentives for employers to provide assistance.
Hard-to-Serve Welfare to Work Participants
An unknown proportion of the rural welfare population faces barriers to employment, which may include mental health problems, substance abuse, domestic violence, and low basic skills and learning disabilities. Although there are no solid measures about the effects of barriers on a welfare recipient’s ability to secure and retain gainful employment, the hard-to-serve population will almost undoubtedly require greater assistance in complying with current work requirements. Approaches for serving this population include accurate assessment of the barriers, identification of appropriate jobs, post-employment services, and intensive case management.
Restructuring Administrative Elements of the Welfare System
The far-reaching changes of welfare reform include changes in administrative structures that provide services to welfare recipients. Rural agency staff may face additional challenges in implementing welfare reform practices because they are less likely to have the human capital and financial resources needed for public administration, economic development, and strategic planning. Three administrative aspects of the welfare system that are likely to affect practices in rural areas are case management, coordination of services, and changing the culture of the welfare office.
CONCLUSIONS
The research literature has very little systematic evaluative information about rural welfare to work strategies. That population and subject have received very little attention from the welfare research industry for several reasons, among them the low number of welfare recipients in rural areas, which presents methodological challenges, results in less public and political attention, and would require substantial resources to produce statistically valid findings.
Although we tried to capitalize on available information and make plausible inferences from other information about rural welfare programs and populations, a long list of research questions remains unanswered. Foremost among them is: What set of strategies is most likely to produce economic self-sufficiency, for what types of welfare recipients, and under what conditions? Answers to this question can help policymakers, program planners, and community members as they work to accomplish the goals of welfare reform.
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