Demand for Government-Provided Job-Training Programs: Evidence from the Illinois Policy Survey Data

This paper examines the determinants of the demand for public job-training programs in Illinois. A first objective is to determine the personal characteristics that influence the support for a spending increase for publicly provided job- training programs for the unemployed across various income groups in Illinois. We test for a U-shaped relationship between income and the demand for publicly provided job training. A second objective is to examine the role of local economic conditions in influencing the demand for job-training programs in Illinois. We use data from the 1995 Illinois Policy Survey supplemented with regional-level data (including the unemployment rate, manufacturing employment, population density, and poverty rate). Our empirical results do not support the existence of a U-shaped relationship between income and the demand for job training. However, we show that regional economic conditions do influence the demand for job-training programs in Illinois