Can public works programs reduce youth crime? Evidence from Papua New Guinea’s Urban Youth Employment Project

Rethinking Youth Employment Programs: Evidence from Two Summer Jobs Experiments

Every day, acts of violence injure over 6,000 people in the U.S. Despite decades of social science arguing that joblessness among disadvantaged youth is a key cause of violent offending, programs to remedy youth unemployment do not consistently reduce delinquency. This study tests whether summer jobs, which shift focus from remediation to prevention, can reduce crime. In a randomized controlled...

The Effects of Youth Employment: Evidence from New York City Summer Youth Employment Program Lotteries

Programs to encourage labor market activity among youth, including public employment programs and wage subsidies like the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, can be supported by three broad rationales. They may: (1) provide contemporaneous income support to participants; (2) encourage work experience that improves future employment and/or educational outcomes of participants; and/or (3) keep participa...

A Search Model of Early Employment Careers and Youth Crime

The school to work transition and the early career path can be di cult for disadvantaged youth. Their labor market is usually studied ignoring the presence of the criminal sector, and yet a large share of them participate in crime. To study these outcomes jointly and explore how they relate, I build and estimate a two-sector search model allowing for a rich set of interactions between the two s...

Youth Crime in an Urban Lower Class Community

Comparative Approaches to Urban Crime Prevention Focusing on Youth