TY  - JOUR
AU  - Heckman,James J.
AU  - Smith,Jeffrey A.
TI  - The Determinants of Participation in a Social Program: Evidence from a Prototypical Job Training Program
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9818
PY  - 2003
Y2  - July 2003
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9818
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9818.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
James J. Heckman
Department of Economics
The University of Chicago
1126 E. 59th Street
Chicago, IL 60637
Tel: 773/702-0634
Fax: 773/702-8490
E-Mail: jjh@uchicago.edu

Jeffrey Smith
Department of Economics
University of Michigan
238 Lorch Hall
611 Tappan Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1220
Tel: 734/764-5359
E-Mail: econjeff@umich.edu
AB  - This paper decomposes the participation process of a prototypical program into eligibility, awareness, application, acceptance and enrollment. With this decomposition, we determine the sources of unequal participation for different groups, and demonstrate that variables often have very different effects at different stages in the participation process. Our analysis shows that personal choices substantially affect participation and that awareness of program eligibility is a major source of variation in participation.
ER  -