Restoring Opportunity for Disadvantaged Youth in the Face of Income and Education Inequality

Background/Purpose: Job Corps is the nation’s largest vocationally focused education and training program for disadvantaged youth. It serves youth between ages 16 and 24, primarily in a residential setting. The Job Corps program and its experimental evaluation have had a profound influence on labor market programs in the United States. Prior research has made important contributions in our understanding of the effectiveness of Job Corps. However, the literature lacks an explanation for how the program works. This study asks: Do the heterogeneous effects exist in terms of length of stay, if so, how are longer stays or shorter stays related to youth outcomes? Do zero tolerance discipline policy changes matter for youth outcomes? If so, who gets more benefits from the policy changes? To address these questions, this study re-analyzes data from the National Job Corps Study.

Methods: The analysis includes two main steps. In the first, this study separates the length of stay into a number of different parts by employing a data mining technique: regression tree. In the second stage of the analysis, this study evaluates the interaction effects between constant length of stay and discrete lengths of stay, while also looking at main effect of length of stay, controlling for demographic information and classes taken by participants. In doing so, this study constructs generalized linear models under poisson and tweedie distributions by utilizing a high performance analytical procedure: hpgenselect. It permits any degree of interaction effects that involve classification and continuous variables, which is most suitable for the analysis of this data.

Results: Results indicate that length of stay plays a key role in determining the program effect on youth outcomes. More important, discrete lengths of stay, which I subdivided into five distinctive durations, have differential effects on youth outcome. Optimal length of stay for labor market outcomes is 6-8 months and 8-14 months for criminal behavior. Less than 2 months of stay has deleterious effects on all youth outcomes: employment and earnings, welfare dependency, and crime. The analysis further suggests that longer stays in an intense residential program may be beneficial for youth who are involved in criminal justice system. Pertaining to the impact of new policies, when compared to pre-policy applicants, post-policy applicants demonstrate better labor market outcomes and lower degrees of criminal involvement.

Conclusions and Implications: This study brings new empirical evidence to the debate on the Job Corps effects in youth development. The study establishes that there is indeed a net association between length of stay and youth outcomes. More importantly, the length of stay is identified as a mechanism that enables specific policy implications to be delineated. Speaking of zero tolerance, this study directly addresses the potential unequal distribution of opportunities, that is, access to resources and life chances that facilitate attainment of desirable outcomes. The results of this investigation revitalize policy efforts that can promote a range of approaches that improve young people’s labor market preparation and prevent criminal activities.