A help or a hindrance? The impact of job training on the employment statusof disadvantaged women

The objective of this study is to evaluate whether welfare-sponsored, gover nment-funded job training helps participants improve their employment statu s. The negligible effects found in prior studies may be due to design limit ations or inherent flaws in job training programs and therefore do not nece ssarily contradict human capital theory. The present study uses longitudina l and representative darn. dynamic modeling techniques, an appropriate coun terfactual, and important contextual variables to assess the likelihood of obtaining employment for job training participants and nonparticipants. It also describes the types of jobs women obtain by examining wages, industry, occupation, and labor union membership. Whereas some of the results suppor t prior research, the focus is on the unique contributions of this study, w hich include a differential training effect for full- and part-time workers and a derailed analysis of macro-structural variables, which an rarely inc luded in studies of labor supply.