The Impact of the Georgia Fatherhood Program on Employment and Wages.

The purpose of this quantitative study is to examine the impact of a job-training program, the Georgia Fatherhood Program (GFP), on the employment levels and wages of low-income, non-custodial parents. A pretest/posttest design was created to compare GFP participants to a similar comparison group. Results of the research indicate that GFP participants experienced a significant increase in employment and gained wages similar to the employed comparison group. However repeated measures analysis revealed that previously employed GFP participants did not significantly increase their wages. The data suggest that the job-training program may be most beneficial to those individuals who are unemployed at the time of enrollment. There are two main limitations to the scope of this study, which relate to the size of the final sample. Also the power of repeated measure analysis is affected by the small sample size. The research presented here demonstrates that the noncustodial parents are able to move into the labor market despite having previously experienced very low levels of employment. Recommendations for future research are presented. (Author abstract)