"This book, which is based on solid research by an all-star cast of experts, provides important and timely findings about current welfare issues, some of which are remarkable. The bottom line for the editors of this valuable book is that the country is on the right track, but staying the course will be a challenge in the years ahead."
-Richard P. Nathan, The Rockefeller Institute of Government, SUNY

"This is an indispensable, comprehensive study of the problems and prospects of low-skilled workers, especially welfare recipients who have been entering the labor market in vast numbers. Impressive for the breadth of its research and the depth of its analyses, the book will be a major resource for policymakers, administrators, and researchers-anyone seeking to redesign programs and policies for the working poor."
-Judith M. Gueron, Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation

"In a field replete with puzzles, this collection of new empirical research confirms some past knowledge and it solves some old mysteries. But it deepens other mysteries and contains some striking new data. Finding Jobs reminds us that the most powerful assistance program for low-skilled workers is a strong economy. It removes any remaining doubt about whether wage subsidies, public service employment, and financial incentives in general can raise employment and earnings of low skill workers-they can."
-Henry J. Aaron, The Brookings Institution

Do plummeting welfare caseloads and rising employment prove that welfare reform policies have succeeded, or is this success due primarily to the job explosion created by today's robust economy? With roughly one to two million people expected to leave welfare in the coming decades, uncertainty about their long-term prospects troubles many social scientists. Finding Jobs offers a thorough examination of the low-skill labor market and its capacity to sustain this rising tide of workers, many of whom are single mothers with limited education. Each chapter examines specific trends in the labor market to ask such questions as: How secure are these low-skill jobs, particularly in the event of a recession? What can these workers expect in terms of wage growth and career advancement opportunities? How will a surge in the workforce affect opportunities for those already employed in low-skill jobs?

Finding Jobs offers both good and bad news about work and welfare reform. Although the research presented in this book demonstrates that it is possible to find jobs for people who have traditionally relied on public assistance, it also offers cautionary evidence that today's strong economy may mask enduring underlying problems. Finding Jobs shows that the low-wage labor market is particularly vulnerable to economic downswings and that lower skilled workers enjoy less job stability. Several chapters illustrate why financial incentives, such as the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), are as essential to encouraging workforce participation as job search programs. Other chapters show the importance of including provisions for health insurance, and of increasing subsidies for child care to assist the large population of working single mothers affected by welfare reform.

Finding Jobs also examines the potential costs of new welfare restrictions. It looks at how states can improve their flexibility in imposing time limits on families receiving welfare, and calls into question the cutbacks in eligibility for immigrants, who traditionally have relied less on public assistance than their native-born counterparts.

Finding Jobs is an informative and wide-ranging inquiry into the issues raised by welfare reform. Based on comprehensive new data, this volume offers valuable guidance to policymakers looking to design policies that will increase work, raise incomes, and lower poverty in changing economic conditions.

REBECCA M. BLANK is dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and Henry Carter Adams Collegiate Professor of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. She is also research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

DAVID E. CARD is Class of 1950 Professor of Economics and head of the Center for Labor Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

CONTRIBUTORS: Patricia Anderson, Timothy Bartik, Kristin Butcher, Janet Currie, Stacy Dickert-Conlin, David T. Ellwood, Tricia Gladden, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Harry J. Holzer, Hilary Hoynes, Luojia Hu, Robert J. LaLonde, Phillip B. Levine, Susan E. Mayer, Robert A. Moffitt, LaDonna A. Pavetti, Philip K. Robins, Christopher Taber, Jane Waldfogel, Elisabeth D. Welty, Aaron Yelowitz

Often described as an emergency, homelessness in America is becoming a chronic condition that reflects an overall decline in the nation's standard of living and the general state of the economy. This is the disturbing conclusion drawn by Martha Burt in Over the Edge, a timely book that takes a clear-eyed look at the astonishing surge in the homeless population during the 1980s.

Assembling and analyzing data from 147 U.S. cities, Burt documents the increase in homelessness and proposes a comprehensive explanation of its causes, incorporating economic, personal, and policy determinants. Her unique research answers many provocative questions: Why did homelessness continue to spiral even after economic conditions improved in 1983? Why is it significantly greater in cities with both high poverty rates and high per capita income? What can be done about the problem?

Burt points to the significant catalysts of homelessness—the decline of manufacturing jobs in the inner city, the increased cost of living, the tight rental housing market, diminished household income, and reductions in public benefit programs—all of which exert pressures on the more vulnerable of the extremely poor. She looks at the special problems facing the homeless, including the growing number of mentally ill and chemically dependent individuals, and explains why certain groups—minorities and low-skilled men, single men and women, and families headed by women—are at greatest risk of becoming homeless. Burt's analysis reveals that homelessness arises from no single factor, but is instead perpetuated by pivotal interactions between external social and economic conditions and personal vulnerabilities.

From an understanding of these interactions, Over the Edge builds lucid, realistic recommendations for policymakers struggling to alleviate a situation of grave consequence for our entire society.

MARTHA R. BURT is director of the Social Services Research Program at the Urban Institute.

Just as famines and plagues can provide opportunities for medical research, the unhappy course of United States relations with Vietnam is a prime source of evidence for students of American political institutions. How Presidents Test Reality draws on the record of American decision making about Vietnam to explore the capacity of top government executives and their advisers to engage in effective reality testing.

Authors Burke and Greenstein compare the Vietnam decisions of two presidents whose leadership styles and advisory systems diverged as sharply as any in the modern presidency. Faced with a common challenge—an incipient Communist take-over of Vietnam—presidents Eisenhower and Johnson engaged in intense debates with their aides and associates, some of whom favored intervention and some of whom opposed it. In the Dien Bien Phu Crisis of 1954, Eisenhower decided not to enter the conflict; in 1965, when it became evident that the regime in South Vietnam could not hold out much longer, Johnson intervened.

How Presidents Test Reality uses declassified records and interviews with participants to assess the adequacy of each president’s use of advice and information. This important book advances our historical understanding of the American involvement in Vietnam and illuminates the preconditions of effective presidential leadership in the modern world.

"An exceptionally thoughtful exercise in what ‘contemporary history’ ought to be. Illuminates the past in a way that suggests how we might deal with the present and the future." —John Lewis Gaddis

"Burke and Greenstein have written what amounts to an owner's manual for operating the National Security Council....This is a book Reagan's people could have used and George Bush ought to read." —Bob Schieffer, The Washington Monthly

JOHN P. BURKE is associate professor of political science at the University of Vermont.

FRED I. GREENSTEIN is professor of politics at Princeton University and director of the Program in Leadership Studies at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.