The Employment Retention and Advancement Project
The Employment Retention and Advancement Project: Results from the South Carolina ERA Site — Overview
Although much is known about how to help welfare recipients find jobs, little is known about how to help them and other low-wage workers keep jobs or advance in the labor market.
The program was run as part of the Employment Retention and Advancement (ERA) project, which is testing 15 programs across the country.
South Carolina's ERA program, Moving Up, which operated between September 2001 and April 2005 in six rural counties, attempted to contact and assist individuals who had left welfare for any reason between October 1997 and December 2000.
Moving Up is being evaluated using a random assignment research design, whereby eligible individuals were assigned, through a lottery-like process, either to a program group, whose members were recruited for the ERA program, or to a control group, whose members were not recruited or eligible for ERA services but who could use other services in the community.
Compared with results for the control group, Moving Up increased participation in some employment-related services, such as vocational training, but only modestly.
Overall, Moving Up had little effect on employment rates, earnings, employment retention, or advancement.
