IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izapps/pp56.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Connecting the Disconnected: Improving Education and Employment Outcomes Among Disadvantaged Youth

Author

Listed:
  • Edelman, Peter B.

    (Georgetown University)

  • Holzer, Harry J.

    (Georgetown University)

Abstract

In this paper we will briefly review recent trends in employment outcomes for disadvantaged youth, focusing specifically on those who have become "disconnected" from school and the labor market, and why these trends have occurred. We then review a range of policy prescriptions that might improve those outcomes. These policies include: 1) Efforts to enhance education and employment outcomes, both among in-school youth who are at risk of dropping out and becoming disconnected as well as out-of-school youth who have already done so; 2) Policies to increase earnings and incent more labor force participation among youth, such as expanding the eligibility of childless adults (and especially non-custodial parents) for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC); and 3) Specific policies to reduce barriers to employment faced by ex-offenders and non-custodial parents (NCPs). We also consider policies that target the demand side of the labor market, in efforts to spur the willingness of employers to hire these young people and perhaps to improve the quality of jobs available to them.

Suggested Citation

  • Edelman, Peter B. & Holzer, Harry J., 2013. "Connecting the Disconnected: Improving Education and Employment Outcomes Among Disadvantaged Youth," IZA Policy Papers 56, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izapps:pp56
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/pp56.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Holzer, Harry J., 2011. "Immigration Policy and Less-Skilled Workers in the United States: Reflections on Future Directions for Reform," IZA Policy Papers 22, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Sarah Hamersma, 2011. "Why Don'T Eligible Firms Claim Hiring Subsidies? The Role Of Job Duration," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 49(3), pages 916-934, July.
    3. Kahn, Lisa B., 2010. "The long-term labor market consequences of graduating from college in a bad economy," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 303-316, April.
    4. John Bound & Richard B. Freeman, 1992. "What Went Wrong? The Erosion of Relative Earnings and Employment Among Young Black Men in the 1980s," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(1), pages 201-232.
    5. Christopher Cornwell & David B. Mustard & Jessica Van Parys, 2013. "Noncognitive Skills and the Gender Disparities in Test Scores and Teacher Assessments: Evidence from Primary School," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 48(1), pages 236-264.
    6. Brian A. Jacob, 2002. "Where the boys aren't: Non-cognitive skills, returns to school and the gender gap in higher education," NBER Working Papers 8964, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Blau, Francine D & Kahn, Lawrence M, 1997. "Swimming Upstream: Trends in the Gender Wage Differential in 1980s," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 15(1), pages 1-42, January.
    8. George J. Borjas, 2021. "The Labor Demand Curve Is Downward Sloping: Reexamining The Impact Of Immigration On The Labor Market," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Foundational Essays in Immigration Economics, chapter 9, pages 235-274, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    9. Harry J. Holzer & Paul Offner & Elaine Sorensen, 2005. "Declining employment among young black less-educated men: The role of incarceration and child support," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(2), pages 329-350.
    10. Peter Z. Schochet & John Burghardt & Sheena McConnell, 2008. "Does Job Corps Work? Impact Findings from the National Job Corps Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 1864-1886, December.
    11. Barry T. Hirsch, 2008. "Sluggish Institutions in a Dynamic World: Can Unions and Industrial Competition Coexist?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(1), pages 153-176, Winter.
    12. repec:mpr:mprres:6097 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Gordon H. Hanson, 2012. "The Rise of Middle Kingdoms: Emerging Economies in Global Trade," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(2), pages 41-64, Spring.
    14. Carolyn J. Hill & Harry J. Holzer & Henry Chen, 2009. "Against the Tide: Household Structure, Opportunities, and Outcomes among White and Minority Youth," Books from Upjohn Press, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, number att, November.
    15. Jonathan Haskel & Robert Z. Lawrence & Edward E. Leamer & Matthew J. Slaughter, 2012. "Globalization and U.S. Wages: Modifying Classic Theory to Explain Recent Facts," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(2), pages 119-140, Spring.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Luis Ayala & Olga Cantó & Juan G. Rodríguez, 2017. "Poverty and the business cycle: A regional panel data analysis for Spain using alternative measures of unemployment," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 15(1), pages 47-73, March.
    2. Asli Beyhan Acar & Mine Afacan Findikli, 2020. "Employment of disadvantaged groups in OECD countries: A comparative study with MDS analysis," International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science (2147-4478), Center for the Strategic Studies in Business and Finance, vol. 9(4), pages 330-342, July.
    3. Olga Cantó & Inmaculada Cebrián & Gloria Moreno, 2019. "Household precariousness and youth living arrangements in Spain: evidence for a complete business cycle," Working Papers 499, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Holzer, Harry J., 2019. "The US Labor Market in 2050: Supply, Demand and Policies to Improve Outcomes," IZA Policy Papers 148, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Harry J. Holzer, 2009. "The Labor Market and Young Black Men: Updating Moynihan's Perspective," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 621(1), pages 47-69, January.
    3. Michael Baker & Kevin Milligan, 2016. "Boy-Girl Differences in Parental Time Investments: Evidence from Three Countries," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 10(4), pages 399-441.
    4. Uwe Dulleck & Juliana Silva-Goncalves & Benno Torgler, 2014. "Impact Evaluation of an Incentive Program on Educational Achievement of Indigenous Students," CREMA Working Paper Series 2014-13, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    5. de Araujo, Pedro & Lagos, Stephen, 2013. "Self-esteem, education, and wages revisited," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 120-132.
    6. Ross Levine & Alexey Levkov & Yona Rubinstein, 2008. "Racial Discrimination and Competition," NBER Working Papers 14273, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Patterson, Richard W. & Patterson, Robert M., 2017. "Computers and productivity: Evidence from laptop use in the college classroom," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 66-79.
    8. Marios Michaelides & Peter Mueser & Jeffrey Smith, 2019. "Youth Unemployment and U.S. Job Search Assistance Policy during the Great Recession," University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics 13-2019, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
    9. Maria Cotofan & Robert Dur & Stephan Meier, 2022. "Does Growing up in Economic Hard Times Increase Compassion? The Case of Attitudes towards Immigration," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 22-047/I, Tinbergen Institute.
    10. Nicole M. Fortin & Philip Oreopoulos & Shelley Phipps, 2015. "Leaving Boys Behind: Gender Disparities in High Academic Achievement," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 50(3), pages 549-579.
    11. Francisco Perez‐Arce & María J. Prados, 2021. "The Decline In The U.S. Labor Force Participation Rate: A Literature Review," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(2), pages 615-652, April.
    12. David H. Autor & Lawrence F. Katz & Melissa S. Kearney, 2005. "Rising Wage Inequality: The Role of Composition and Prices," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 2096, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research.
    13. Christopher L. Smith, 2012. "The Impact of Low-Skilled Immigration on the Youth Labor Market," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(1), pages 55-89.
    14. repec:dgr:rugggd:gd-135 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Barry T. Hirsch & John V. Winters, 2014. "An Anatomy Of Racial and Ethnic Trends in Male Earnings in the U.S," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 60(4), pages 930-947, December.
    16. Balart, Pau & Oosterveen, Matthijs & Webbink, Dinand, 2018. "Test scores, noncognitive skills and economic growth," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 134-153.
    17. Morin, Louis-Philippe, 2015. "Cohort size and youth earnings: Evidence from a quasi-experiment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 99-111.
    18. Uwe Dulleck & Juliana Silva-Goncalves & Benno Torgler, 2016. "Evaluation of an Incentive Program on Educational Achievement of Indigenous Students," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 92(298), pages 329-347, September.
    19. Deborah A. Cobb-Clark & Julie Moschion, 2017. "Gender gaps in early educational achievement," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 30(4), pages 1093-1134, October.
    20. Delaney, Judith M. & Devereux, Paul J., 2021. "Gender and Educational Achievement: Stylized Facts and Causal Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 14074, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    21. Marcel P. Timmer & Abdul Azeez Erumban & Bart Los & Robert Stehrer & Gaaitzen J. de Vries, 2014. "Slicing Up Global Value Chains," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 28(2), pages 99-118, Spring.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    youth; education; employment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J08 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics Policies
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izapps:pp56. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.