Off the Dole

By Ron Stodghill II/Chicago

It was nowhere near payday, and Lisa Halverson was down to $10 and a package of diapers. While she enjoyed working as a typist in Minneapolis, day-care expenses for her two preschoolers, at $160 a week, ate most of her $207 take-home pay. Halverson felt she had no choice but to go on welfare. "The hardest thing I ever had to do," she says, "was to tell my boss I couldn't afford to work anymore."

Not so fast, Lisa. Instead of paying her to stay home, welfare officials encouraged her to keep her low-paying job and offered to pay all but $25 of her monthly day-care bill. That was in 1994, and today it's clear that Minnesota's investment in Halverson paid off. She got off the dole after a year, and now earns a $45,000 salary as a manager at a regional telephone company. She has never married, but Halverson, 29, says she would like to change that too.

Every state likes to trot out its welfare-to-work successes, but Minnesota has more than most. Last week a comprehensive evaluation of the state's unique approach to welfare reform--an initiative that requires recipients to work but initially subsidizes them--showed impressive results. Since the state's reform went into effect in 1994, employment among welfare recipients swelled 35%, and other measures of well-being--from marriage rates to school success--also improved.

The new study, conducted by Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, a nonpartisan research center, was lauded across political lines, and could move more states to follow Minnesota's lead. Today most states focus on reducing the welfare case load through short-time limits on benefits, offering little of the transitional help that Minnesota credits for its success.

--By Ron Stodghill II/Chicago