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This chapter considers means-tested employment and training programs in the United States. We focus in particular on large, means-tested federal programs, including the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA), its successor the Workforce Investment Act (WIA), that program’s recent replacement, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), the long-running Job Corps program, and the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program. The first part of the chapter provides details on program history, organization, expenditures, eligibility rules, services, and participant characteristics. In the second part of the chapter, we discuss the applied econometric methods typically used to evaluate these programs, which in the United States means primarily social experiments and methods such as matching that rely on an assumption of “selection on observed variables.” The third part of the chapter reviews the literature evaluating these programs, highlighting both methodological and substantive lessons learned as well as open questions. The fourth part of the chapter considers what lessons the evaluation literature provides on program operation, especially how to best allocate particular services to particular participants. The final section concludes with the big picture lessons from this literature and discussion of promising directions for future research.

Since the mid-1980s, the employment and household income of working-age people with disabilities in the United States have steadily declined, while their reliance on public income and health support has grown much faster than can be explained by demographic and workforce participation factors alone. The central challenge for policymakers is to enact reforms that will empower people with disabilities to realize their full productivity, preserve basic supports for those who need them, and slow growth in public expenditures for their support during a time of fiscal austerity. This chapter describes the very limited progress toward meeting these reform objectives, considers why past policy initiatives have not been more successful, and presents a road map for greater success in the future.

Radha Jagannathan and Michael Camasso author this chapter that examines the feasibility of exporting the spirit of entrepreneurship, a mindset that has traditionally existed in the mix of policies to promote youth economic development in the United States. Using a Tocquevillian view that Americans follow ‘the principle of self-interest rightly understood” as a vehicle, the chapter portrays how Americans approach economic activity generally, and provides an overview of policy tools adopted by the United States from both the demand and supply side of the labor market and the flexible character of the economy. The rather discouraging results the USA has had in implementing VET programs through various employment and training legislations are recounted in the chapter, as are some demand-side fixes to the labor market such as wage subsidies to employers and minimum wage changes. These discussions are prologue to a longer treatment of American entrepreneurship and how it has been used a pivotal youth employment strategy. Lastly, the chapter examines the transferability of American-style entrepreneurship to Greece, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain and provides some suggestions for success in this regard.

This chapter argues that child care support does not simply enable women to maintain employment, it also makes it sensible for many working mothers to enroll in job training and educational programs that enable them to enhance their careers. For many, child care support is the only way they can sustain the additional hours associated with working in many traditional male-dominated occupations. As working mothers' pay increases, they gain less from government-subsidized child care. For these mothers, improved child-related federal and state tax benefits can substantially reduce the costs of child care. The chapter shows how Workforce Investment Act (WIA) training programs help increase female access to male-dominated occupations rather than continue to direct women into traditional female occupations. Training programs should also be made available to working mothers who want to enhance their skills, rather than being reserved solely for the underemployed and unemployed.