Evaluation of the Australian Wage Subsidy Special Youth ...

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completers. Their argument was that such a short experience did not constitute treatment,
because they would not have had time to benefit much from the programme (Rao and
Jones (1986): 1). To control for differences in eligibility and characteristics of
participants, they estimated the post-programme employment chances of “clearly defined
socio-demographic groups in different programmes” (Rao and Jones (1986): 5). There
were 2 groups – most disadvantaged and least disadvantaged. 56 They estimated logistic
regressions of the probability of full-time continuous employment or not, where the
employment variable’s basic definition was defined as for Baker (1984). The regression
included grouped age (15-19, 20-24), sex, year of schooling, post-school training and
completion, post-school job, pre-programme unemployment 57 , past programme
experience, NSW resident or not, and twelve programme dummies including four SYETP
dummies for Commonwealth, private, second serve and extended. From the regression
estimates, the percentage probabilities were calculated.
They found that individual characteristics as well as the type of programme affected postprogramme
employment outcomes. Completing the programme or near-completion gave
better employment outcomes than early withdrawal which was the quasi-control group.
Employment based programmes performed better than training/education-based
programmes. They found that of the employment based programmes, GTA on-the-job
performed better than SYETP, and that this was because GTA did not prescribe prior
unemployment or age criteria and was ‘occupational demand’ based whereas SYETP was
aimed at disadvantaged youths. Amongst SYETP, private SYETP and extended SYETP
were more effective than Commonwealth SYETP. A ‘second serve’ SYETP, where
former SYETP participants had again experienced long-term unemployment and were
given a second SYETP placement performed worst of all employment programmes. The
most-disadvantaged were proportionally more likely to benefit from the programmes.
However they also concluded that as the probability of post-programme employment was
56 Rao and Jones (1986) p6. Most disadvantaged: 15-19 years, female, schooling to year 9, started but
incomplete post-school training, no post-school full-time job, unemployed for more than 12 months prior to
placement, no other program participation, NSW resident. Least disadvantaged: 20-24 years, male,
completed schooling to year 11/12, completed post-school training, had a post-school job, no
unemployment prior to placement, other past program experience, not NSW resident.
57 The pre-program unemployment groups are: none, less than 3 months, 3-6 months, 6-12 months, >12
months.