Seventeen percent of welfare spells in which the recipient has a high school diploma or GED
have simultaneous college enrollment (Table 1). When limited to a younger age group, who might be
more at-risk of college enrollment, the rate decreases slightly to 15.5 percent. Enrollment rates are
commensurately lower when recipients of all education levels are included in the denominator. Spell
enrollment rates are not easily interpretable as spell lengths vary tremendously (e.g., from 2 to 200
months). Tabulations not shown in Table 1 indicate that in any given year between 1979 and 1998,
about 13 percent of female welfare recipients in the NLSY who completed high school or the
equivalent were enrolled in college.