26. Government Programs and Labor Markets

Since the 1980s, federal and state governments have created multiple programs to improve employment in disadvantaged neighborhoods. In their research, Ham et al. (2011) focused on measuring the impact on the labor market of three such programs: State Enterprise Zones (ENTZ), Federal Empowerment (EMPZ) and Federal Enterprise Community (ENTC); see Green and Malpezzi (2003) for an excellent review of housing policies and programs in the U.S. It is important to assess the outcomes of these programs for three reasons. First, these are expensive programs that cost a substantial amount of tax money from governments. Second, these programs provide alternatives to other programs aiding low-income labors such as Job Corps, which only has a modest effect. Third, the evaluations conducted previously on these programs were not sufficient. Thus, Ham et al. (2011) calculated the impact of ENTZ, EMPZ and ENTC by analyzing the 1980, 1990 and 2000 Census Data, and found that all the three programs have significant benefits for employment of disadvantaged labors.