The impact of the Self-Sufficiency Project on the employment behaviour of former welfare recipients

The Self-Sufficiency Project (SSP) was a Canadian randomized trial in which the program group had 12 months to find full-time employment in order to qualify for a subsidy that roughly doubled their pre-tax earnings for the next three years. We find evidence of significant impacts of SSP on non-employment and employment durations. For the treated group, simulation results show an impact on the employment rate at 52 months after random assignment in the range of 7 to 11 percentage points; this is approximately a 25% increase in the employment rate compared with having no treatment in place.