Youth Employment Programs - Independent Evaluation Group

Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER),the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3iE), Innovations forPoverty Action, and the Youth Employment Inventory.The key words used to identify relevant articles were “labor markets,”“ALMP,” “youth employment,” “job search assistance for youth/young,”“self-employment/entrepreneurship,” “vocational training,” “apprenticeship,”“school-to-work transition,” “wage,” and “market earning” with the crosscuttingterms “impact evaluation” or “evaluation.”An initial list of 59 evaluations was identified for further review. Both theirabstracts and summaries were reviewed to discern whether the evaluationwas specifically related to youth employment. Each study was reviewed toidentify whether youth were explicitly targeted and, if not, whether youthwere identified in the analysis as beneficiaries of the intervention. Studieswere excluded if they did not explicitly measure outcomes for youth or if theydid not disentangle youth employment interventions from other labor marketinterventions.Evaluations that did not provide sound information on interventionobjectives, design, and target criteria were excluded, as were studies that didnot report employment or earning outcomes for beneficiary groups. Thirtyeightevaluations were retained for the systematic review, among them 16articles from peer-reviewed journals (42 percent), 5 World Bank workingpapers and reports (13 percent), and 17 working papers and reports from otherinstitutions (45 percent).Categorizing Studies by Methodology. The methodology of each study wasanalyzed. The 38 studies were reviewed and categorized as one of three typesbased on the methodology used:• Impact evaluations with experimental or quasi-experimental design usingindividual micro-data with no cost-benefit analysis (22 studies);• Impact evaluations with cost-benefit analysis (10 studies); and• Other evaluations with outcomes measures (6 studies)Studies were classified as impact evaluations if they constructed acounterfactual to program participation using experimental or quasiexperimentalmethods, such as randomization, propensity score matching,difference-in-difference, instrumental variables, or regression discontinuity.Impact evaluations identify a comparison group of non-beneficiaries thatresembles the without-program scenario for beneficiaries. Further, to becategorized as an impact evaluation, the regression must use micro-data andinclude robustness tests. Results should be robust on a variety of factors,including changes in econometric methods and specification, endogeneityissues, context, and implementation aspects. The impact evaluation categorywas further broken down into evaluations that included a cost-benefitanalysis and those that did not.82 Youth Employment Programs