Welfare Policies and Domestic Abuse Among Single Mothers: Experimental Evidence from Minnesota

This article examines the effects on domestic abuse of a pilot welfare program that took place in urban and rural counties of Minnesota from 1994 to 1998. Like many other random assignment evaluations of welfare programs, this pilot program was not designed to explicitly test the effects of special provisions on victims of domestic abuse. Yet in urban counties, the Minnesota program increased employment and reduced domestic abuse among single-mother welfare recipients. Similar effects were not found in rural counties. Urban-rural differences were not a result of racial/ethnic composition but were likely related to differences in prior marital experiences.