This report examines the prevalence and severity of health problems that hinder welfare recipients' ability to get and hold jobs, using data from interviews with women who in May 1995 received welfare and lived in four poor, urban areas. The study compared the health of women who had left welfare and were working, who combined welfare and work, who received welfare and did not work, or who neither worked nor received welfare. Interviews occurred in 1998 and 1999, before anyone had reached federal time limits. These women and their children had markedly higher rates of physical and mental health problems than did national samples. Their health problems were often multiple and severe. Over 70 percent faced at least one of eight health-related barriers to work (e.g., being morbidly obese or having a child with an illness that constrained employment), and 40 percent had two or more. Working women, especially welfare leavers, were in much better health than unemployed women, but many lacked health insurance. Women with multiple health problems were more likely than other women to have been sanctioned by welfare agencies in the previous year. Unemployed welfare leavers had the most compromised health situations. (Contains 190 references.) (SM)