Six years ago, Minnesota implemented a forward-looking welfare-to-work program focused on long-term financial security and stability for its recipients. What sets Minnesota's Family Investment Project apart from most other states' reform schemes is an "earned income disregard" that allow participants to work without fear of losing their welfare benefits.

Recently, the Manpower Demonstration Research Corp. released a study of Minnesota's approach to reform that deserves other states' attention. It found that the program not only boosted participants' self-sufficiency, it also contributed to an impressive increase in marriage rates and equally impressive declines in domestic violence and in reports of childen having trouble in school.

Between April 1994 and March 1996, more than 14,000 families in seven Minnesota counties were randomly assigned by lottery to either the Minnesota Family Investment Project or the traditional welfare program. The experimental program allows participants to remain eligible for full welfare benefits until their earned income levels cross above 140 percent of the poverty line. The traditional program immediately begins to phase out benefits as income increases. The experimental program also requires participants to train for jobs and provides up-front subsidies for child care as opposed to reimbursements for expenses. That later provision may sound trifling, but for a single mother with an entry-level job, it may mean the difference between being able to afford to work or not.

According to MDRC, the full-time employment rate for women assigned to the experimental program rose 35 pecent. Their earnings increased by 23 percent. Participants also were 21 percent less likely to be solely dependent on welfare than women enrolled in the traditional welfare program.

Beyond its outstanding financial and employment results, the Minnesota Family Investment Project yielded significant social benefits. Project participants were 38 percent more likely than traditional welfare recipients to get married. Single, urban participants with school-aged children were 18 percent less likely to experience domestic violence. And below-average school performance among their children declined 42 percent.

Marriage rates are up, employment is up, domestic violence is down, and children are doing better at school. So, with results like those, why are other states reluctant to adopt Minnesota's approach to reform? The answer is that welfare cannot be reformed on the cheap, a point New Democrats have consistently made for more than a decade. The Minnesota Family Investment Project is just that -- an investment. The experiment cost the state $50 million.

States need to decide whether the measure of success in welfare reform is reducing caseloads and cutting costs, or helping the poor find and keep jobs and lead productive, independent lives. If the choice is the latter, the Minnesota program points the way.

-- Lauren Collins