An Overlooked Impact of Welfare Reform: The Effect on General Assistance Recipients - Evidence from Two Welfare-To-Work Programs in New York City

for its generous support and the New York City Human Resources Administration for making the data available and funding a portion of this work. All findings and conclusions expressed in this paper are those of the author. To date very little is known regarding General Assistance (GA) recipients ’ response to welfare reform. In New York City, GA recipients were required to participate in a workfare and a welfare-to-work program. Recipients were initially enrolled in each program in ‘waves ’ due to program capacity constraints. I identify the effect of the programs using a quasi-experiment in which enrollees are compared to concomitantly eligible, non-enrolled recipients. I find that each program increased welfare exits and that the latter program also increased employment. The magnitude of these effects is similar to the effect that similar programs have on family assistance recipients