High public assistance utilization rates among Southeast Asian refugees have led to serious concerns about the success or failure of the U.S. resettlement effort. Results presented here show that these high rates are misleading. Receipt of public assistance by refugees is far from a clear indication of welfare dependency and an obstacle to economic progress. In fact, public aid helps to establish a reasonable standard of living for many who work. Independence from public cash payments is also not a clear end to the struggle for economic integration.Government programmes, interacting with the demographic composition of households and conditions of the local labour market, moderate the impact of refugees' poverty. But such aid also serves as a source of economic and social differentiation. The consequences of receiving state aid are sufficiently strong to make access to assistance a primary source of inequality within the refugee population. © 1988 Oxford University Press.

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