Whether low-skill parents at risk for welfare receipt benefit
from higher education is an open question. The majority
of studies that explicitly focus on welfare recipients compare
the impact of education relative to “work first” activities
(e.g., job search assistance) on earnings and welfare recipient.
Early evaluations found little evidence that recipients
benefited from education and human capital development
activities (e.g., findings from California’ s GAIN experiment
discussed in Riccio and Friedlander (1992) and Riccio,
Friedlander, and Freedman (1994)). Later research illustrated
the possibility that earnings increases following education
might take longer to appear. For instance, Hotz, Imbens, and
Klerman (2006) show that California welfare recipients assigned to education-focused activities experienced larger
earnings gains over the long-run than those assigned to
work-first activities.9 Although studies of the GAIN experiment
have the advantage of randomization, the “treatment”
of human capital development includes many types of education
and training activities, including basic skills training,
vocational training, and community college coursework,
with limited information on the amount of time spent in
these activities and whether training or courses were attended
and what, if any, credentials were received