A Helping Hand Goes a Long Way: Long-Term Effects of Counselling and Support to Workfare Program Participants
We study the medium- and long-run impacts of the Canada Self-Sufficiency Project (SSP) Plus program, which randomly offered intensive employment support services for up to three years to long-term welfare recipients eligible for temporary earnings subsidies. We examine whether this intervention—designed to address both economic and psychosocial barriers to finding and retaining desirable employment—produced long-run changes in individuals’ socioeconomic trajectories. We link study participants to high-frequency survey data and to their federal tax and employer-employee matched records for up to 20 years following random assignment. The intensive services treatment resulted in a 20–27 percent increase in participants’ annual earnings over the 20-year period and sustained increases in full-time employment during the first decade post-intervention. As potential mechanisms, treated individuals engaged in more job search and job-to-job transitions and secured employment in higher-wage jobs and at higher-paying firms.
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