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By all accounts, welfare reforms passed into law in 1996 have been a huge success. Even as the economy has struggled, welfare rolls remain low. Poverty rates are down. Millions have moved into the workforce, many for the first time.

But in December 2000, Carla Preston was not one of them. A 32-year-old mother of three living in inner city Philadelphia, Preston had been in and out of factory jobs. She'd been on public assistance for two years and, she says," I wasn't paying my bills or my rent." The federal time limit of five years on benefits and the requirement that welfare recipients work 20 hours a week prompted many of Preston's peers to move into the workforce. But these inducements didn't work in her case. Neither did the routine job search programs to which welfare recipients are first assigned.