Opportunity Youth: Disenfranchised Young People

Turning the Improbable
Into the Exceptional!
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The Advocacy Foundation, Inc.
Helping Individuals, Organizations & Communities
Achieve Their Full Potential
Since its founding in 2003, The Advocacy Foundation has become recognized as an effective
provider of support to those who receive our services, having real impact within the communities
we serve. We are currently engaged in community and faith-based collaborative initiatives,
having the overall objective of eradicating all forms of youth violence and correcting injustices
everywhere. In carrying-out these initiatives, we have adopted the evidence-based strategic
framework developed and implemented by the Office of Juvenile Justice & Delinquency
Prevention (OJJDP).
The stated objectives are:
1. Community Mobilization;
2. Social Intervention;
3. Provision of Opportunities;
4. Organizational Change and Development;
5. Suppression [of illegal activities].
Moreover, it is our most fundamental belief that in order to be effective, prevention and
intervention strategies must be Community Specific, Culturally Relevant, Evidence-Based, and
Collaborative. The Violence Prevention and Intervention programming we employ in
implementing this community-enhancing framework include the programs further described
throughout our publications, programs and special projects both domestically and
internationally.
www.TheAdvocacyFoundation.org
ISBN: ......... ../2017
......... Printed in the USA
Advocacy Foundation Publishers
Philadlephia, PA
(878) 222-0450 | Voice | Data | SMS
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Dedication
______
Every publication in our many series’ is dedicated to everyone, absolutely everyone, who by
virtue of their calling and by Divine inspiration, direction and guidance, is on the battlefield dayafter-day
striving to follow God’s will and purpose for their lives. And this is with particular affinity
for those Spiritual warriors who are being transformed into excellence through daily academic,
professional, familial, and other challenges.
We pray that you will bear in mind:
Matthew 19:26 (NIV)
Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible,
but with God all things are possible." (Emphasis added)
To all of us who daily look past our circumstances, and naysayers, to what the Lord says we will
accomplish:
Blessings!!
- The Advocacy Foundation, Inc.
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The Transformative Justice Project
Eradicating Juvenile Delinquency Requires a Multi-Disciplinary Approach
The way we accomplish all this is a follows:
The Juvenile Justice system is incredibly overloaded, and
Solutions-Based programs are woefully underfunded. Our
precious children, therefore, particularly young people of
color, often get the “swift” version of justice whenever they
come into contact with the law.
Decisions to build prison facilities are often based on
elementary school test results, and our country incarcerates
more of its young than any other nation on earth. So we at
The Foundation labor to pull our young people out of the
“school to prison” pipeline, and we then coordinate the efforts
of the legal, psychological, governmental and educational
professionals needed to bring an end to delinquency.
We also educate families, police, local businesses, elected
officials, clergy, and schools and other stakeholders about
transforming whole communities, and we labor to change
their thinking about the causes of delinquency with the goal
of helping them embrace the idea of restoration for the young
people in our care who demonstrate repentance for their
mistakes.
1. We vigorously advocate for charges reductions, wherever possible, in the adjudicatory (court)
process, with the ultimate goal of expungement or pardon, in order to maximize the chances for
our clients to graduate high school and progress into college, military service or the workforce
without the stigma of a criminal record;
2. We then enroll each young person into an Evidence-Based, Data-Driven Restorative Justice
program designed to facilitate their rehabilitation and subsequent reintegration back into the
community;
3. While those projects are operating, we conduct a wide variety of ComeUnity-ReEngineering
seminars and workshops on topics ranging from Juvenile Justice to Parental Rights, to Domestic
issues to Police friendly contacts, to CBO and FBO accountability and compliance;
4. Throughout the process, we encourage and maintain frequent personal contact between all
parties;
5 Throughout the process we conduct a continuum of events and fundraisers designed to facilitate
collaboration among professionals and community stakeholders; and finally
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6. 1 We disseminate Quarterly publications, like our e-Advocate series Newsletter and our e-Advocate
Quarterly electronic Magazine to all regular donors in order to facilitate a lifelong learning process
on the ever-evolving developments in the Justice system.
And in addition to the help we provide for our young clients and their families, we also facilitate
Community Engagement through the Restorative Justice process, thereby balancing the interesrs
of local businesses, schools, clergy, elected officials, police, and all interested stakeholders. Through
these efforts, relationships are rebuilt & strengthened, local businesses and communities are enhanced &
protected from victimization, young careers are developed, and our precious young people are kept out
of the prison pipeline.
This is a massive undertaking, and we need all the help and financial support you can give! We plan to
help 75 young persons per quarter-year (aggregating to a total of 250 per year) in each jurisdiction we
serve) at an average cost of under $2,500 per client, per year.*
Thank you in advance for your support!
* FYI:
1. The national average cost to taxpayers for minimum-security youth incarceration, is around
$43,000.00 per child, per year.
2. The average annual cost to taxpayers for maximun-security youth incarceration is well over
$148,000.00 per child, per year.
- (US News and World Report, December 9, 2014);
3. In every jurisdiction in the nation, the Plea Bargain rate is above 99%.
The Judicial system engages in a tri-partite balancing task in every single one of these matters, seeking
to balance Rehabilitative Justice with Community Protection and Judicial Economy, and, although
the practitioners work very hard to achieve positive outcomes, the scales are nowhere near balanced
where people of color are involved.
We must reverse this trend, which is right now working very much against the best interests of our young.
Our young people do not belong behind bars.
- Jack Johnson
1
In addition to supporting our world-class programming and support services, all regular donors receive our Quarterly e-Newsletter
(The e-Advocate), as well as The e-Advocate Quarterly Magazine.
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The Advocacy Foundation, Inc.
Helping Individuals, Organizations & Communities
Achieve Their Full Potential
…a collection of works on
Opportunity Youth
Disenfranchised Young People
“Turning the Improbable Into the Exceptional”
Atlanta
Philadelphia
______
John C Johnson III
Founder & CEO
(878) 222-0450
Voice | Data | SMS
www.TheAdvocacyFoundation.org
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Biblical Authority
______
Philippians 4:6-7 (NASB)
6
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything
by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving
let your requests be made known to
God. 7 And the peace of God, which
surpasses all comprehension, will guard
your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Proverbs 3:5-6
5
Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
And do not lean on your own understanding.
6
In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He
will make your paths straight.
Deuteronomy 31:6
6
Be strong and courageous, do not be
afraid or tremble at them, for the Lord your
God is the one who goes with you. He will
not fail you or forsake you.”
Ephesians 4:29
29
Let no unwholesome word proceed from
your mouth, but only such a word as is good
for edification according to the need of the
moment, so that it will give grace to those
who hear.
Exodus 20:12
12
“Honor your father and your mother, that
your days may be prolonged in the land
which the Lord your God gives you.
Isaiah 40:29-31
29
He gives strength to the weary, and to him
who lacks might He increases power.
30
Though youths grow weary and tired, and
vigorous young men stumble badly, 31 Yet
those who wait for the Lord Will gain new
strength; They will mount up with wings like
eagles, they will run and not get tired, they
will walk and not become weary.
1 Corinthians 10:13
13
No temptation has overtaken you but such
as is common to man; and God is faithful,
who will not allow you to be tempted beyond
what you are able, but with the temptation
will provide the way of escape also, so that
you will be able to endure it.
1 Timothy 4:12
12
Let no one look down on your
youthfulness, but rather in speech,
conduct, love, faith and purity, show
yourself an example [a] of those who believe.
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Table of Contents
…a collection of works on
Opportunity Youth
Disenfranchised Young People
______
Biblical Authority
I. Introduction: Disconnected Youth……………………………………… 15
II. Youth Empowerment……………………………………………………. 21
III. Positive Youth Development…..……………………………………….. 29
IV. Youth Participation………….……………………………………………. 35
V. Reconnecting Youth: Program Profile…………………………………. 41
VI. References……………………………………………………………….. 43
Attachments
A. What Works for Disconnected Young People: A Scan of the Evidence
B. Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds
Who are Not Working or In School
C. Disconnected Youth - Out of School and Out of Work in Rural America
Copyright © 2018 The Advocacy Foundation, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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I. Introduction
Disconnected Youth
Disconnected Youth are young people aged 16 to 24 who are neither
working nor in school. According to the most recent Measure of America report, there
are 4.9 million, or one in every eight, American young people in this age group who
are not connected to either of these anchor institutions. Disconnected youth are
sometimes referred to as Opportunity Youth.
Emphasis is placed upon this group because the years between the late teens and the
mid-twenties are believed to be a critical period during which young people form adult
identities and move toward independence. The effects of youth disconnection—limited
education, social exclusion, lack of work experience, and fewer opportunities to develop
mentors and valuable work connections—can have long-term consequences that
snowball across the life course, eventually influencing everything from earnings and
self-sufficiency to physical and mental health and marital prospects. Much discussion
has been focused on how to reach these young people and connect them with broader
social institutions in order to prevent these negative consequences.
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Analysis has also examined the economic impact of youth disconnection. According to
the Measure of America report, the average disconnected youth costs $37,450 a year in
government services.
Definition
The term has gained increased usage in recent years among policy advocates and
social science researchers, particularly after the Great Recession. After a decade of
relatively stable rates, the rolls of the disconnected surged by over 800,000 young
people between 2007 and 2010. The latest data indicates that the rate of youth
disconnection has fallen to 12.3 percent, a significant drop from the 2010 post-recession
high of 14.7 percent, or 5.8 million young people.
A 2012 study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that "the data show that the
populations struggling the most to enter the workforce and stay in school today are
youth who are less educated, come from low-income families and belong to a racial or
ethnic minority."
The United States Department of Education defines disconnected youth as those aged
14 to 24 years old, but relies on calculations done for the 16-24 group by Measure of
America. Some researchers have narrowed the definition of youth disconnection to
exclude those above an income and education threshold, and those parenting with a
connected spouse.
The two surveys commonly used to calculate youth disconnection are the American
Community Survey (ACS) and the Current Population Survey (CPS). Each survey has
its advantages; the ACS surveys people in "group quarters" and has a larger sample
size, which allows demographic and geographic disaggregation of data, while the CPS
is an older survey, including data from 1940 on.
Youth Disconnection in the 25 Largest US Metro Areas
Below is a list of United States metropolitan areas sorted by their rates of disconnected
youth, as well as youth disconnection rates by race and ethnicity in metro areas where
the population of that racial or ethnic group is sufficiently large for robust estimates. The
data were taken from Measure of America's 2017 report, "Promising Gains, Persistent
Gaps: Youth Disconnection in America."
Rank
Metro Area
All
(percent)
African
American
(percent)
Latino
(percent)
United States 12.3 18.9 14.3 10.1
1 Boston 7.3 10.8 9.6 6.5
2 Minneapolis 7.9 - - 5.8
White
(percent)
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Rank
Metro Area
All
(percent)
African
American
(percent)
Latino
(percent)
3 San Francisco 9.2 21.8 9.6 6.9
4 San Diego 9.7 - 11.3 8.6
5 Washington 10.3 14.6 11.9 7.3
6 Denver 10.3 - 14.6 7.7
7 Seattle 10.9 - 15.7 10.2
8 Los Angeles 11.1 21.2 12.0 8.4
9 Portland 11.2 - 13.0 11.6
10 Baltimore 11.3 20.5 - 7.0
11 St. Louis 11.5 19.4 - 8.5
12 Chicago 12.1 22.9 12.2 8.2
13 New York City 12.2 18.2 15.6 8.7
14 Orlando 12.2 17.4 14.1 8.8
15 Miami 12.2 17.0 11.9 8.8
16 Dallas-Fort Worth 12.4 15.2 14.6 10.4
17 Philadelphia 12.9 22.2 18.0 8.5
18
Tampa-St.
Petersburg
12.9 21.8 12.1 11.1
19 Phoenix 13.2 21.0 15.2 10.6
20 San Antonio 13.4 - 15.6 11.2
21 Atlanta 13.6 17.8 13.1 10.9
22 Houston 13.7 15.3 15.8 10.8
23 Charlotte 14.7 17.4 17.3 13.3
24 Detroit 15.0 25.6 - 10.5
25
Riverside-San
Bernardino
Organizations working to reconnect youth:
16.1 21.1 16.5 14.8
White
(percent)
America's Promise
Annie E. Casey Foundation
College Track
Forum for Youth Investment
Job Corps
Latin American Youth Center (DC)
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Larkin Street
Lyric
National Fund for Workforce Solutions
National League of Cities Institute for Youth, Education and Families
Native American Youth
Public Allies
ROCHA
The Aspen Forum for Community Solutions
The Door
Tulane University's Cowen Institute
Year Up
YouthBuild USA
Youth Cares
Youth Transition Funders Group
______
Youth Disconnection
by Opportunity Nation
Disconnected youth are white and black, Hispanic and Asian. They are middle-class
and poor, native born and immigrants. They live in rural, suburban and urban areas.
Some struggled in school and lacked adequate supports to make it to graduation day.
They include in their number the estimated one million students who drop out of high
school each year, and fall through the cracks. Others are youth involved in the justice
system, teen parents or foster care children who “aged out” of the system without a
clear plan for adulthood.
Many are looking for work that they can’t find, often because they lack the technical,
communication and problem-solving skills required by today’s job market. And too many
young people can’t come up with the money to pay for increasingly expensive postsecondary
job training or college they need to get ahead. In fact, some of them enrolled
in college, only to drop out because of financial constraints.
Yet we know that young people are key to vibrant neighborhoods, communities and
economies. The Opportunity Index clearly shows that one of the indicators most
correlated with a region’s Opportunity Score is the percentage of young people
ages 16-24 who are not in school or not working. If we can reconnect more youth to
meaningful educational and career pathways, we will all benefit.
The personal and collective costs of youth disconnection are steep. Young adults who
are not in school or working cost taxpayers $93 billion annually and $1.6
trillion over their lifetimes in lost revenues and increased social services.
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There are plenty of reasons for youth disconnection – societal, familial, financial,
educational, personal. But other countries have figured out ways to support families,
children and students that produce more equitable societies, adaptable economies and
richer environments for opportunity. We can, too.
The fact is the U.S. must do more to retool our educational supports, economic systems
and federal policies so that our young people can meet the challenges of the 21st
century global economy.
Whether liberal or conservative; working in government, business or the nonprofit
sector; leaders or everyday Americans; we all have a role to play. Fortunately, there are
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success stories all around the country we can learn from and emulate, many from
the Opportunity Nation Coalition.
These young adults are our future and deserve our urgent attention and investment. We
all have a stake in helping the next generation meaningfully connect to education, the
economy and civic life and restoring our promise as a land of opportunity.
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II. Youth Empowerment
Youth Empowerment is a process where children and young people are
encouraged to take charge of their lives. They do this by addressing their situation and
then take action in order to
improve their access to resources
and transform their
consciousness through their
beliefs, values, and
attitudes. Youth empowerment
aims to improve quality of life.
Youth empowerment is achieved
through participation in youth
empowerment programs.
However scholars argue that
children’s rights implementation
should go beyond learning about
formal rights and procedures to
give birth to a concrete
experience of rights. There are
numerous models that youth
empowerment programs use that
help youth achieve
empowerment. A variety of youth
empowerment initiatives are underway around the world. These programs can be
through non-profit organizations, government organizations, schools or private
organizations.
Youth empowerment is different than youth development because development is
centered on developing individuals, while empowerment is focused on creating greater
community change relies on the development of individual capacity.
Empowerment movements, including youth empowerment, originate, gain momentum,
become viable, and become institutionalized. Youth empowerment is often addressed
as a gateway to intergenerational equity, civic engagement and democracy building.
Activities may focus on youth-led media, youth rights, youth councils, youth activism,
youth involvement in community decision-making, and other methods.
Empowerment Theory
Elements of Empowerment
Empowerment theory focuses on processes that enable participation; enhance control
through shared decision making; and create opportunities to learn, practice, and
increase skills. Empowerment theory suggests that engaging youth in pro-social,
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meaningful, and community-enhancing activities that the youth themselves define and
control, helps youth gain vital skills, responsibilities, and confidence necessary to
become productive and healthy adults.
Types of Empowerment
Youth empowerment examines six interdependent dimensions: psychological,
community, organizational, economic, social and cultural. Psychological empowerment
enhances individual's consciousness, belief in self-efficacy, awareness and knowledge
of problems and solutions and of how individuals can address problems that harm their
quality of life. This dimension aims to create self-confidence and give youth the skills to
acquire knowledge. Community empowerment focuses on enhancing the community
through leadership development, improving communication, and creating a network of
support to mobilize the community to address concerns. Organizational empowerment
aims to create a base of resources for a community, including voluntary organizations,
unions and associations that aim to protect, promote and advocate for the
powerless. Economic empowerment teaches entrepreneurial skills, how to take
ownership of their assets and how to have income security. Social empowerment
teaches youth about social inclusion and literacy as well as helping kids find the
resources to be proactive in their communities. Cultural empowerment aims to recreate
cultural practices and redefine cultural rules and norms for youth. Through these
dimensions of empowerment, programs can work on empowering youth in one or more
aspects of their lives.
Goals of Empowerment
Youth empowerment programs are aimed at creating healthier and higher qualities of
life for underprivileged or at-risk youth. The five competencies of a healthy youth are: (1)
positive sense of self, (2) self- control, (3) decision-making skills, (4) a moral system of
belief, and (5) pro-social connectedness. Developmental interventions and programs
have to be anchored on these competencies that define positive outcomes of healthy
youth.
Measurable Empowerment
Over the last two decades, quality of life (QOL) has emerged as an important unit of
measurement to evaluate the success of empowerment programs. It is used as a goal
of programs and as well as an indicator of effectiveness. However, there is no standard
definition of QOL. A person's QOL is dependent upon subjective evaluation of the
individual aspects of that individual's life.
Positive Development Settings
Youth empowerment programs thrive in positive developmental settings. Positive
developmental settings promote youth competence, confidence and connections. Two
features of the positive developmental youth settings are supportive relationships and
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support for efficacy and mattering. Supportive relationships are those that are between
youth and non-familial adults that foster trust and respect. Support for efficacy and
mattering specifically focuses on youth being active, instrumental agents of change in
their communities, collective decision-making and adults listen to and respect their
voice.
Youth Empowerment Programs
There are various types of empowerment programs across the globe that empower
youth through many different tactics and programs. Programs can operate in a variety of
settings. The majority of programs operate in more than one setting, which may be a
key factor in their success. The beneficial outcomes to youth empowerment programs
are improved social skills, improved behavior, increased academic achievement,
increased self-esteem and increased self-efficacy.
There are programs are aimed at just empowering women and young girls. Regardless
of specific goals or methods, empowering effects include improving women’s wellbeing,
self-esteem, and self-efficacy, and enhancing social status by teaching technical and
organizational skills.
Other youth empowerment programs are focused on poverty alleviation. Living
standards are for those living in poverty are declining causing forms of deprivation as it
relates to food, resources and education. Programs aimed at empowering poor youth,
work toward livelihood protection or livelihood promotion.
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There are also empowerment movements that use the social action model, aiming for
disadvantaged people to become empowered, organized, and educated so that they
may create change. These programs advocate for constructive confrontations to
enhance the social power of people who are considered disadvantaged. Another model
is the 5C's model that focuses on emphasizing competence, confidence, connection,
character and caring. A sixth C of contribution to society was later added. This model
focuses primarily on engagement as a key marker of positive youth development,
emphasizing the need to foster initiative. Youth-adult partnerships are another type of
empowerment method used around the world. This method has been defined as a
developmental process and a community practice. The partnership involves people of
different ages working together on community issues over a period of time. The method
emphasizes reciprocity among adults and youth with a focus on shared decision making
and reflective learning. The concept of shared control is key for empowering youth.
Youth empowerment has also been used as a framework to prevent and reduce youth
violence. Research shows that these youth empowerment programs can improve
conflict avoidance and resolution skills, increase group leadership skills, and civic
efficacy and improve ethnic identity and reduce racial conflict.
Examples of Youth Empowerment Programs
Around the globe there are various empowerment programs focused on a wide variety
of things and this is not a comprehensive list. Unsuccessful youth empowerment
programs have not been carefully documented or published in case studies.
In Namibia, one popular empowerment program is Pots of Hope. Pots of Hope's main
goal is to reduce the vulnerability youth to HIV and Aids through education, information
and awareness, as well as income security projects. Pots of Hope works by educating,
and providing counseling to those in rural settings who do not have access to those
resources. This program focuses on organizational empowerment within the community.
Within the United States there are countless empowerment programs for youth.
Urban 4-H is a culturally responsive, community-based practice that authentically
engages families, youth and the community in the development of youth. Urban 4-H is
an example of community empowerment that focuses on the economic and social
dimensions of empowerment. The program helps youth build skills to enable them to
overcome economic and social barriers while recognizing the importance of selfdirected
learning for youth. Urban 4-H focuses on empowering youth to think critically,
communicate across cultural boundaries and lead others.
The United Nations has numerous development programs, one of them being youth
empowerment programs. The United Nations provides support to national policy
development surrounding empowerment within the five regions. They do this by
providing evidence-based policy guidance and programmatic support by promoting the
active participation of youth in society. The UNDP promotes inclusive youth participation
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in effective and democratic governance, economic empowerment of youth,
strengthened youth engagement in building resilience in their communities, inclusion of
youth in the future development agenda, including through consultations and
discussions. The United Nations youth empowerment programs examine all four
dimensions of youth empowerment and seeks to improve all of them.
USAID has youth empowerment programs set up around the world that are aimed at
civic engagement, access to resources and opportunities for education and
employment.
Government Involvement In Empowerment
Youth empowerment is often addressed as a gateway to intergenerational equity, civic
engagement and democracy building. Local, state, provincial, regional, national, and
international government agencies and nonprofit community-based organizations
provide programs centered on youth empowerment. Activities involved therein may
focus on youth-led media, youth rights, youth councils, youth activism, youth
involvement in community decision-making, and other methods.
Each major political party in the United States, including the Republicans,
the Democrats, and the Green Party, as well as several major European, African, South
American (Peru), and Australian political parties have statements supporting youth
empowerment. Youth empowerment is also a central tenet of the United
Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which every country in the world (minus
the United States and South Sudan) has signed into law.
United States
Youth empowerment occurs in homes, at schools, through youth organizations,
government policy-making and community organizing campaigns. Major structural
activities where youth empowerment happens throughout society include
community decision-making, organizational planning, and education reform.
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Educational activities that cite youth empowerment as an aim include student-centered
learning, popular education, and service learning. Free schools and youth-led
mediaorganizations often state their intention to empower youth, as well as youth
voice, community youth development, and youth leadership programs. Youth
empowerment is studied by a variety of scholars including Shawn Ginwright, Henry
Giroux, Barry Checkoway, Mike Males and Marc A. Zimmerman. Their research is
highlighted by advocacy from notable activists such as William Upski Wimsatt, Alex
Koroknay-Palicz, Salome Chasnoff and Adam Fletcher.
Republic of Ireland
In 2002 Comhairle na nÓg was established in each local authority area as part of the
National Children's strategy. Comhairle na nÓg is Irish for Youth Council. These
councils are encouraged to include the participation of young people from all walks of
life and to tackle local issues affecting young people. It is run by the local county or city
councils under the Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs. It is a
recognized political organisation by the Irish Government. An extension of Comhairle na
nÓg is the Comhairle na nÓg National Executive. The National Executive has one
"youth councillor" from every Comhairle na nÓg and deal with issues important to young
people. These issues are nominated by young people themselves at an AGM every two
years. The Comhairle na nÓg National Executive has the opportunity to express there
views in a form of a researched report, ad-campaign, conferences, seminars and to put
those views to policy makers.
Commonwealth
The 53 member countries of the Commonwealth of Nations have all signed up to the
Commonwealth Plan of Action for Youth Empowerment (2007–2015). The Plan of
Action underpins the work of the Commonwealth Youth Programme (CYP). On the
Commonwealth definition, "Young people are empowered when they acknowledge that
they have or can create choices in life, are aware of the implications of those choices,
make an informed decision freely, take action based on that decision and accept
responsibility for the consequences of those actions. Empowering young people means
creating and supporting the enabling conditions under which young people can act on
their own behalf, and on their own terms, rather than at the direction of others."
The Plan of Action for Youth Empowerment was developed by the Commonwealth
Secretariat, working closely with Ministers of Youth and young people themselves. It
encourages youth mainstreaming and contains thirteen action points for governments.
The first of these is: “Develop and implement measures to promote the economic
enfranchisement of young people” through a range of measures ranging from microcredit
and entrepreneurship education through to reviewing macro-economic planning
and trade regimes and how they affect young people. Other action points address
gender equality, HIV/AIDS, education, the environment, youth participation in decisionmaking,
and democracy and human rights.
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Benefits of Empowerment
When youth participate in established empowerment programs they see a variety of
benefits. The practices of youth involvement and empowerment become embedded
within the organizational culture and the community culture. Adults and organizations
also benefit from empowerment programs. The both become more communicable and
responsive to youth in the community, which leads to program improvements as well as
increased participation from youth.
Critiques of Youth Empowerment
One major critique of youth empowerment is that most programs take a risk-focused
approach. There has been a major emphasis on what is going wrong for youth in their
lives rather than what goes right.
This portrays young people as a problem that need to be fixed, and displays the
process of development as a process of overcoming risk. This may deter youth from
joining youth development programs.
The risked-based model can obscure the fact that adolescence is a time when young
people master skills and concepts.
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III. Positive Youth Development
Positive Youth Development (PYD) refers to intentional efforts of
other youth, adults, communities, government agencies and schools to provide
opportunities for youth to enhance their interests, skills, and abilities. PYD is used in
scientific literature and by practitioners who work with youth to refer to programs
designed to optimize developmental progress.
PYD differs from other approaches to youth in that it rejects an emphasis on trying to
correct what is "wrong" with children's behavior or development. Programs and
practitioners seek to empathize with, educate, and engage children in productive
activities. While not particularly common in use yet, PYD has been used across the
world to address social divisions, such as gender and ethnic differences.
Background
Positive youth development originated from ecological systems theory to focus on the
strengths of adolescence. It is also similar conceptually with the principles of positive
psychology. Central to its philosophy, the theory of PYD suggests that "if young people
have mutually beneficial relations with the people and institutions of their social world,
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they will be on the way to a hopeful future marked by positive contributions to self,
family, community, and civil society."
The major catalyst for the development of positive youth development came as a
response to the negative and punitive methods of the "traditional youth development"
approach. The traditional approach makes a connection between the changes occurring
during adolescent years and either the beginning or peaking of several important public
health and social problems, including homicide, suicide, substance use and
abuse, sexually transmitted infections and teen and unplanned pregnancies. Another
aspect of the traditional approach lies in that many professionals and mass
media contribute to it through the portrayal of adolescents as "inevitable problems" that
simply need to be fixed. Specific evidence of this "problem-centered" model is present
across professional fields that deal with young people. Many connections can also be
made to the current U.S. criminal justice model that favors punishment as opposed to
prevention.
The concept and practice of positive youth development "grew from the dissatisfaction
with a predominant view that underestimated the true capacities of young people by
focusing on their deficits rather than their development potential". Encouraging the
positive development of adolescents can help to lessen the likelihood of such problems
arising by easing a healthy transition into adulthood.
Goals
PYD focuses on the active promotion of optimal human development, rather than on the
scientific study of age related change, distinguishing it from the study of child
development or adolescent development. or as solely a means of avoiding risky
behaviors. Rather than grounding its developmental approach in the presence of
adversity, risk or challenge, a PYD approach considers the potential and capacity of
each individual young person. A hallmark of these programs is that they are based on
the concept that children and adolescents have strengths and abilities unique to
their developmental stage and that they are not merely "inadequate" or "undeveloped"
adults. Lerner and colleagues write: "The goal of the positive youth development
perspective is to promote positive outcomes. This idea is in contrast to a perspective
that focuses on punishment and the idea that adolescents are broken".
Positive youth development is both a vision, an ideology and a new vocabulary for
engaging with youth development. Its tenets can be organized into the 5 C's which
are: competence, confidence, connection, character, and caring. When these 5 C's are
present, the 6th C of "contribution" is realized.
Key Features
Positive youth development programs typically recognize contextual variability in youths'
experience and in what is considered "healthy" or "optimal" development for youth in
different settings or cultures. This cultural sensitivity reflects the influence of
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Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory. The influence of ecological systems theory
is also seen on the emphasis many youth development programs place on the
interrelationship of different social contexts through which the development person
moves (e.g. family, peers, school, work, and leisure).
The University of Minnesota's Keys to Quality Youth Development summarizes eight
key elements of programs that successfully promote youth development. Such
programs are physically and emotionally safe, give youth a sense of belonging and
ownership and foster their self-worth, allow them to discover their "selves" (identities,
interests, strengths), foster high quality and supportive relations with peers and adults,
help youth recognize conflicting values and develop their own, foster the development
of new skills, have fun, and have hope for the future.
In
addition, programs that employ PYD principles generally have one or more of the
following features:
promote bonding
foster resilience
promote social, emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and moral competence
foster self-determination
foster spirituality
foster self-efficacy
foster clear and positive identity
foster belief in the future
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provide recognition for positive behavior and opportunities for pro-social
involvement
promote empowerment
foster pro-social norms
Using PYD to address stereotypes and inequality
Gender
Positive youth development principles can be used to address gender inequities through
the promotion of programs such as "Girls on the Run." Physical activity-based programs
like "Girls on the Run" are being increasingly utilized around the world for their ability to
encourage psychological, emotional, and social development for youth. "Girls on the
Run" enhances this type of physical activity program by specifically targeting female
youth in an effort to reduce the gendered view of a male-dominated sports arena. "Girls
on the Run" is a non-profit organization begun in 1996 that distributes a 12-week
training program to help girls prepare for a 5k running competition. This particular
program is made available to 3rd through 5th grade female students throughout the
United States and Canada to be implemented in either school or community-based
settings.
Another example of positive youth development principles being utilized to target
youth gender inequities can be seen in that of a participatory diagramming approach in
Kibera, Kenya. This community development effort enabled participants to feel safe
discussing their concerns regarding gender inequities in the community with the
dominant male group. This approach also enabled youth to voice their needs and
identify potential solutions related to topics like HIV/AIDS and family violence.
Ethnic minorities in the United States
Positive youth development can be used to combat negative stereotypes surrounding
youth of minority ethnic groups in the U.S. After-school programs have been directly
geared to generate increased participation for African American and Latino youth with a
focus on academic achievement and increasing high school graduation rates. Studies
have found programs targeting African American youth are more effective when they
work to bolster a sense of their cultural identity. PYD has even been used to help
develop and strengthen the cultural identities of American Indian and Alaskan
Native youth. PYD methods have been used to provide a supportive setting in which to
engage youth in traditional activities.
Various programs have been implemented related to sports, language, and arts and
crafts. Sports programs that use positive youth development principles are commonly
referred to as "sports-based youth development" (SBYD) programs. SBYD incorporates
positive youth development principles into program and curricula design and coach
training.
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Models of implementation
Asia
The key constructs of PYD listed above have been generally accepted throughout the
world with some regional distinctions. For example, a Chinese Positive Youth
Development Scale has been developed to conceptualize how these features are
applicable to Chinese youth. The Chinese Positive Youth Development Scale was used
as a measure in a study of Chinese youth in secondary schools in Hong Kong that
indicated positive youth development has a direct impact on life satisfaction and
reducing problem behavior for Chinese youth. One specific example of PYD
implementation is seen in the project "P.A.T.H.S.
(Positive Adolescent Training through Holistic
Social Programs) to Adulthood: A Jockey
Club Youth Enhancement Scheme." This
program targets junior secondary school
students in Hong Kong (Grades 7
through 9 in the North American
System). The program is composed of
two terms, the first of which is a
structured curriculum focusing on the
15 PYD constructs and designed for
all students as a "universal
prevention initiative." The Tier 2
Program is a more selective
prevention model directly targeting
students
with
greater psychosocial needs identified
by
the school social work service providers.
The
label "at-risk" is intentionally avoided because
the term denotes a very negative stigma in Chinese culture, and therefore discourages
participation in the program. Although Chinese social workagencies commonly target
students with greater psychosocial needs, these PYD programs have rarely undergone
thorough systemic evaluation and documentation.
Europe
In Portugal, the utility of positive youth development principles in sporting contexts is
beginning to be recognized. Several athletic-based programs have been implemented in
the country, but more research is necessary to determine their effectiveness at this
point.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Positive youth development has also been seen in the form of youth volunteer
service throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. From Mexico and
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the Caribbean to Central and South America, this form of implementation has been
acknowledged for encouraging both personal and community development, while
oftentimes contributing to poverty reduction. It has furthermore been seen as a way of
promoting civil engagement through various service opportunities in communities.
Positive youth development efforts can be seen in the work of the United States Agency
for International Development (USAID) in collaboration with various regional
governments and the private sector across Latin America and the Caribbean. This work
has focused on providing broader educational options, skills training, and opportunities
for economically disadvantaged youth to obtain apprenticeships.
The ¡Supérate! Centers across El Salvador are one example, as they are supported by
USAID in combination with private companies and foundations, and offer expanded
education for high-performing students from poorer economic backgrounds. As of 2011,
there were 7 centers in El Salvador and USAID expressed plans to expand this model
across Central America. In Brazil, the Jovem Plus program offers high-demand skills
training for youth in disadvantaged communities in Rio de Janeiro and the northeastern
area of the nation. Other programs include the "Youth Movement against Violence"
in Guatemala and "Youth Upliftment through Employment" in Jamaica.
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IV. Youth Participation
Youth Participation is the active engagement of young people throughout their
own communities. It is often used as a shorthand for youth participation in any many
forms, including decision-making, sports, schools and any activity where young people
are not historically engaged.
Coinage
Youth participation, also called youth involvement, has been used by government
agencies, researchers, educators, and others to define and examine the active
engagement of young people in schools, sports, government, community
development and economic activity.
In 1975, the National Commission on Resources for Youth in the United States defined
youth participation as:
...Youth participation is the involving of youth in responsible, challenging action that
meets genuine needs, with opportunities for planning and/or decision-makingaffecting
others in an activity whose impact or consequence is extended to others— i.e., outside or
beyond the youth participants themselves. Other desirable features of youth participation
are provision for critical reflection on the participatory activity and the opportunity for
group effort toward a common goal.
In 1995, the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) established a definition
of meaningful youth participation as:
Meaningful youth participation involves recognizing and nurturing the strengths, interests,
and abilities of young people through the provision of real opportunities for youth to
become involved in decisions that affect them at individual and systemic levels.
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In 2006 the Commonwealth Youth Programme and UNICEF remarked: "As there are
many types of developmental processes, cultures and unique individuals in the world,
participation is not any one phenomenon. There are various definitions of participation.
A basic concept of participation however, is that people are free to involve themselves
in social and developmental processes and that self-involvement is active, voluntary
and informed."
The platform for youth to get involved has continued to increase in contemporary
society, however these opportunities cannot be seen to be amplifying the voice of youth
in society.
Models
There are various models of youth participation which can be followed when attempting
to get young people involved with decision making or acting for change.
Marc Jans and Kurt De Backer present the Triangle of Youth Participation. This
suggests that young people will actively engage with society when presented with three
specific dimensions; firstly they must have something to challenge. Following this, they
must feel they have the capacity to make a difference and finally must be able to
connect with others in order to tackle the issue effectively.
Hart’s Ladder of Participation is a model that can be used when developing and working
on youth participation projects. It aims to enable young people to take an active part in
decision making, and give them the opportunity to have a 'voice' in society.
Hart states there are 8 steps on the 'Ladder of Participation" The first three steps,
manipulation, decoration and tokenism, are considered not be engaging young people
in active youth participation, but instead provide a pathway to move up onto the other
stages of youth participation. The following five steps after this look at how to fully
integrate young people into the decision making process and how to get them actively
involved. These steps evolve in that the next step the adult organize an event for young
people to volunteer in (young people assigned but not informed). Following this the
young people's opinions will have some influence on decisions made and they will
receive feedback on these opinions (Young people are consulted and informed). Next
step involves adults coming up with the initial idea, and young people taking the
necessary steps to implement it with their own ideas and organization (Adult-initiated,
shared power with young people). The penultimate step look at young people having full
power and creative license over their ideas and projects (Young people lead and
initiated action). The final step looks at the amalgamation of some of the final few steps,
in that the young people initiate the idea and invite adults to join in, thus leading to an
equal partnership. (Young people and adult share decision making.)
Examples
In these forms, youth participation activities may include:
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Youth councils
Participatory action research
Youth-led media
Youth-targeted political organizations
Youth participation often requires some measure of student voice or youth voice, as well
as youth/adult partnerships. Results are often measured by youth
development goals, academic outcomes or returns on social capital. They may take the
form of civic engagement, youth rights or intergenerational equity.
A 2013 study concluded that 90% of parents regularly consult their children when
making decisions. Of surveyed parents, only 35% were consulted when they were kids.
Spectra of Activities
Working on behalf of UNICEF, in 1992 sociologist Roger Hart created a model for
thinking about youth participation as a continuum of activities. Entitled the "Ladder of
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Participation," this spectrum identifies eight types of youth participation ranging
from tokenism and manipulation to engaging youth as partners. Adam Fletcher of
the Freechild Project has identified a range of youth participation in social change
through his "Cycle of Engagement". David Driskell, another UN-affiliated researcher,
has identified several "steps" towards youth participation, while Daniel Ho-Sang has
analyzed models according to a horizontal continuum.
Indigenous American Communities' Way of Learning
In some Indigenous communities of the Americas, children are seen as legitimate
participants and have access to learn in order to make an important impact in
their community. Their high involvement in family endeavors allow them to observe and
experience skills they will need as community members. Children are able to learn
because they have the chance to collaborate with everyone in the community. They
also are eager to participate and take initiative to engage in family and community
events
At different ages, children are performing a variety of tasks in their community. In
the Yucatec Mayan community of Mexico, regardless of age, every member can be
seen participating in the daily endeavors of their family in some form. At the age of 18
months, Mari is the youngest child in her family. Mari imitates her mother by using a leaf
to scrub the stool like her mother. Mari’s mother pleasantly watcher her while she
continues to clean the furniture. Although she is very young, her mother welcomes her
eagerness to participate in the family’s daily endeavors.
Indigenous children of San Pedro engage in activities like play, lessons, work and freestanding
conversation, with family and community members of different ages. Children
from the age of two to three year olds are integrated in activities with their elders. For
example, Many two to three year olds do errands around the community and sell fruit or
other goods. This gives children greater accessibility to the endeavors of their elders
and greater chances to learn useful skills.
Around three years old, Indigenous Mayan children from San Pedro, Guatemala are
involved in mature-work such as farming, cooking, and caregiving. At this age they are
observing what others are doing around them, but around five-years old they begin to
directly help out such as running errands on their own. The Mayan children are able to
learn by being highly involved in the adults’ work.
In the community of Chillihuani in the high Peruvian Andes, at an early age, children
around the age of four years old contribute to their family by running errands and
helping take care of younger siblings. Four year old Victor contributes to his family by
running errands and helping take care of his two younger sisters by bringing his
mother's diapers, going outside to dust small blankets, and holding their bottles while
his sisters are drinking milk. This allows children to observe, listen and learn so that
they can be able to meaningfully contribute to these endeavors as they get older.
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As the children become older, they are able to take on more responsibilities. Also, as
their skills become more advanced, children are able to take initiative in different tasks.
In Guadalajara, Mexico, children around nine to ten-years old were reported regularly to
take the initiative and contribute to family household works and activities like cleaning
the house. This initiation allows children to be more involved in their community. For
example, In Yucatan, Mexico, children as young as fifteen-year-old will take over his
father’s field to cultivate which helps out their family immensely. Children take initiative
out of interest and participate as much as they can.
In an experiment, siblings of Mexican- heritage with Indigenous history were
invited to build a toy together. They were able to learn how to build the
toy by working together, considering
others ideas, and combining their
methods. This study shows that being part of the community at an early age
allows them to learn important values such as involvement and
contribution which they carry out in
their own activities.
In
many
Indigenous
American
communities, children are considered as legitimate contributing
participants. Children are integrated in the daily endeavors of
the family and community. They have greater access to various
opportunities to observe and learn so that they can make a meaningful
impact in their family and community.
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Page 40 of 72

V. Reconnecting Youth
by The National Institute of Justice
Program Profile
A school-based prevention program that targets underachieving students at risk of dropping out.
The program is rated No Effects. The program had a significant negative effect on conventional
peer bonding at the immediate post-intervention follow-up and significant negative effects on
conventional peer bonding and peer high-risk behavior at the 6-month follow-up.
Program Goals/Target Population
Reconnecting Youth is a school-based prevention program that targets underachieving students
at risk of dropping out. The three primary program goals are to:
1. increase school performance (reflected by decreases in truancy and increases in grade
point averages [GPA])
2. decrease drug involvement
3. improve mood management (reflected by decreases in depression, anger, and anxiety)
The class concentrates on skills training within the context of adult and peer support. The class
aims to help at-risk youth strengthen protective factors while reducing suicide and other related
risk factors in four primary areas: school, peers, family, and self.
The program targets students in grades 9 through 12 who show signs of poor school
achievement and potential for dropping out of high school (low grades and absenteeism) and
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who exhibit other problem behaviors such as substance abuse, depression, and suicidal
ideation. Students who are eligible to participate in Reconnecting Youth are identified from
among set criteria:
1. The student is behind in credits for a grade level, is in the highest 25th percentile for
absences, and has a GPA below 2.3.
2. The student has a prior dropout status.
3. The student is referred by school personnel and meets one or more of the criteria in
point 1.
Program Components
The Reconnecting Youth class consists of 10 to 12 students and incorporates social support
and life-skills training into a daily, semester-long class using a 75-lesson curriculum. The class
is part of the high school curriculum, and students are usually invited (but are not required) to
participate in the class. Students who do take part in Reconnecting Youth receive course credit
for
participating.
Program Theory
The Reconnecting Youth class is a theory-based intervention that incorporates components of
strain, social learning, and social control theories into an integrated model. The class
concentrates on two essential components: social support and life-skills training. The social
support elements framing the program are 1) a network component built on prosocial
relationship bonds emerging between the teacher and students and within the intervention peer
group, and 2) a social support process derived from the group interaction processes and lifeskills
training. The life-skills training consists of four elements: self-esteem enhancement,
decision-making, personal control, and interpersonal communication. Each unit’s presentation is
sequenced, beginning with skill introduction, skill development, application, and finally skill
transfer and relapse prevention. Problem-related skills are also included in each unit and are
applied to the central program goals, such as increasing mood management to decrease
depression, suicide risk behavior, and anger control problems.
Key Personnel
The Reconnecting Youth Leader who runs the class (usually a school staff member who excels
at working with high-risk youth and has completed the Reconnecting Youth training module)
monitors class attendance, school achievement, moods, drug involvement, and social
interactions. The Reconnecting Youth Leader also helps establish drug-free social activities and
friendships.
Additional Information: Negative Program Effects
A randomized controlled trial (described below in Evaluation Methodology and Outcomes)
compared high-risk youth in high school who participated in the Reconnecting Youth program to
high-risk youth who did not participate in the program. At the 6-month follow-up, the program
was found to have had significant negative effects on measures of conventional peer bonding
and peer high-risk behavior, and had no significant effects on measures of delinquency, alcohol
use, smoking, GPA, anger, and school connectedness.
…
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X. References
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disconnected_youth
2. https://opportunitynation.org/disconnected-youth/
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_empowerment
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_youth_development
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_participation
6. https://www.crimesolutions.gov/ProgramDetails.aspx?ID=345
7. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED564456.pdf
8. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R40535.pdf
9. http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-andanalysis/blogs/stateline/2017/04/27/disconnected-youth-out-of-school-andout-of-work-in-rural-america
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Notes
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Notes
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Page 46 of 72

Attachment A
What Works for Disconnected Young People:
A Scan of the Evidence
Page 47 of 72

MDRC Working Paper
What Works for Disconnected Young
People
A Scan of the Evidence
Louisa Treskon
February 2016

This work was supported by the Youth Transition Funders Group.
Dissemination of MDRC publications is supported by the following funders that help finance
MDRC’s public policy outreach and expanding efforts to communicate the results and implications
of our work to policymakers, practitioners, and others: The Annie E. Casey Foundation,
Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, The Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, Ford
Foundation, The George Gund Foundation, Daniel and Corinne Goldman, The Harry and Jeanette
Weinberg Foundation, Inc., The JBP Foundation, The Joyce Foundation, The Kresge Foundation,
Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Sandler Foundation, and The Starr Foundation.
In addition, earnings from the MDRC Endowment help sustain our dissemination efforts. Contributors
to the MDRC Endowment include Alcoa Foundation, The Ambrose Monell Foundation,
Anheuser-Busch Foundation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation,
Ford Foundation, The George Gund Foundation, The Grable Foundation, The Lizabeth and
Frank Newman Charitable Foundation, The New York Times Company Foundation, Jan Nicholson,
Paul H. O’Neill Charitable Foundation, John S. Reed, Sandler Foundation, and The Stupski
Family Fund, as well as other individual contributors.
The findings and conclusions in this report do not necessarily represent the official positions or
policies of the funders.
For information about MDRC and copies of our publications, see our website: www.mdrc.org.
Copyright © 2016 by MDRC ® . All rights reserved.

Overview
This paper was commissioned by the Youth Transition Funders Group in 2015. The purpose
was to conduct a scan of the current state of the evidence regarding what works in helping disconnected
young people, defined as the population of young people ages 16 to 24 who are not
connected to work or school. To prepare the paper, MDRC conducted a literature review of relevant
policies and programs. The literature reviewed included writing on impact, quasiexperimental,
and implementation studies. MDRC also conducted reviews of numerous websites
to learn about current policy trends and evaluations in process. To supplement what was
learned from written materials, MDRC interviewed a number of practitioners in the field, including
representatives from foundations, coalitions, and research organizations.
The main findings of this scan are:
• Policies affecting disconnected young people span a range of systems, including public
schools; adult basic and secondary education; and the juvenile justice, foster care, and mental
health systems. As a result services, funding, and research are often uncoordinated and
fragmented, though collective impact or system-level approaches are attempting to combat
these challenges.
• Though program impacts may be modest or short-lived, successful programs share some
common features. These include: opportunities for paid work and the use of financial incentives;
strong links among education, training, and the job market; the use of youth development
approaches; comprehensive support services; and support after programs end.
• Programs share some common implementation challenges, including: outreach and enrollment
practices that may limit the populations they serve; difficulties keeping young people
engaged in a program long enough to benefit from it; staff turnover; and difficulties addressing
young people’s barriers to participation, particularly their lack of transportation
and child care.
• The field’s understanding of what works in serving disconnected young people could advance
significantly in the coming years, as more than a dozen evaluations of programs are
currently under way, including evaluations of collective impact approaches.
• There are gaps in the existing services available: There are not enough programs for young
people who are not motivated to reconnect to education or the job market on their own, nor
for young people who have weak basic skills, especially those who have aged out of the
public school system. The areas where there are gaps in services also tend to be areas where
there is little evidence regarding what works.
iii

Contents
Overview
Acknowledgments
iii
vii
Chapter
I Introduction 1
II Dimensions of the Issue 2
Policies Affecting Disconnected Young People 3
Public Schools 4
High School Equivalency Credentials 5
Employment and Career Pathways 6
Special Populations 8
Adolescent Development and Mental Health 9
Collaboration and Collective Impact 9
III The Evidence Base on Programs and Practices for Disconnected
Young People 10
Types of Evaluations 10
Evidence on Programs 11
Employment-Focused Programs 12
Education-Focused Programs 13
Basic Skills Programs 19
Outreach and Case Management Models 20
Behavioral Interventions 22
Synthesis of “What Works” 23
Findings from Implementation Studies 24
Evidence from Evaluations of Collective Impact Approaches 26
Past Efforts 26
Current Efforts 27
IV Opportunities for Expanding Services and Learning What Works 29
Opportunities and Recommendations 31
All Disconnected Young People 31
Young People Who Are Persistently Disconnected 31
Young People with Low Basic Skills 32
Disconnected Young People with Stronger Skills 32
Appendix: Selected Evaluations of Programs for Disconnected Young
People 35
References 43
v

Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the Youth Transition Funders Group (YTFG) Multiple Pathways to Graduation
Work Group for supporting this effort. In particular, we thank the following YTFG members
for their guidance and feedback: Nancy Martin, Jerry Bexten, Patrice Cromwell, and Barbara
Langford. YTFG members Kim Knous Dolan, Carmelita Galicia-Muñoz, Regina Salliey,
Elisha Smith Arrillaga, and Nahir Torres also contributed comments on previous drafts of this
scan. We also thank Abigail Carlton, Karen Gardiner, Andrew Moore, Justin Piff, and Don
Spangler for participating in interviews. In addition, we are grateful to Gordon Berlin, Rob Ivry,
Dan Bloom, John Martinez, and Farhana Hossain at MDRC for their input throughout this project.
Hannah Wagner formatted the many footnotes and references, Joshua Malbin was the editor,
and Stephanie Cowell prepared the manuscript to be posted online.
vii

I. Introduction
The paper was commissioned by the Youth Transition Funders Group (YTFG) in 2015. The
purpose was to conduct a scan of the current state of the evidence regarding what works in
helping disconnected young people, defined as the population of young people ages 16 to 24
who are not connected to work or school. YTFG asked MDRC to cover four main research
questions:
• What local, state, and federal policies have an impact on disconnected young
people? What policies are helping improve services for this population? What
policies are barriers to creating effective programs?
• What programs have been shown to be effective in serving disconnected
young people? What evaluations in process have the potential to contribute to
the evidence base?
• What is known about the effectiveness of system-level approaches, also called
“collective impact approaches?”
• Where are there gaps in services or knowledge? What programs or practices
should be targeted for further research or expansion?
To prepare this paper, MDRC conducted a literature review of relevant policies and
programs. The literature reviewed included writing on impact, quasi-experimental, and implementation
studies. MDRC also conducted reviews of numerous websites to learn about current
policy trends and evaluations in process. To supplement what was learned from written materials,
MDRC interviewed a number of practitioners in the field, including representatives from
foundations, coalitions, and research organizations.
The main findings of this scan are:
• Policies affecting disconnected young people span a range of systems, including
public schools; adult basic and secondary education; and the juvenile justice,
foster care, and mental health systems. As a result services, funding, and
research are often uncoordinated and fragmented, though collective impact or
system-level approaches are attempting to combat these challenges.
• Though program impacts may be modest or short-lived, successful programs
share some common features. These include: opportunities for paid work and
the use of financial incentives; strong links among education, training, and the
job market; the use of youth development approaches; comprehensive support
services; and support after programs end.
1

• Programs share some common implementation challenges, including: outreach
and enrollment practices that may limit the populations they serve; difficulties
keeping young people engaged in a program long enough to benefit
from it; staff turnover; and difficulties addressing young people’s barriers to
participation, particularly their lack of transportation and child care.
• The field’s understanding of what works in serving disconnected young people
could advance significantly in the coming years, as more than a dozen
evaluations of programs are currently under way, including evaluations of collective
impact approaches.
• There are gaps in the existing services available: There are not enough programs
for young people who are not motivated to reconnect to education or
the job market on their own, nor for young people who have low basic skills,
especially those who have aged out of the public school system. The areas
where there are gaps in services also tend to be areas where there is little evidence
regarding what works.
II.
Dimensions of the Issue
This section summarizes some of the major recent trends and policy developments affecting
disconnected young people. This group is also referred to as “opportunity youth,” a term intended
to capture the untapped potential of these young people. In 2014, the population of disconnected
young people in the United States was estimated at 5.6 million, or just over 14 percent of
the total population of 16- to 24-year-olds. 1 As many as 1.6 million of these young people have
reached age 18 yet lack either a high school or high school equivalency diploma. 2 Though the
percentage of young people who are disconnected from education and the job market has fallen
slightly in recent years, the economic and social costs of disconnection are still significant — by
one estimate disconnected young people cost taxpayers $93 billion in 2011. 3
There have been positive signs in recent years that young people are staying in school
and entering postsecondary education at higher rates. In 2013, the national dropout rate (the
share of 18- to 24-year-olds who were not in school and had not completed high school)
reached a record low of 7 percent. 4 College enrollment rates have increased in recent years, and
now about 40 percent of the 18- to 24-year-old population is enrolled in college. 5 Though en-
1 Measure of America (2015).
2 U.S. Census Bureau (2012).
3 Bridgeland and Milano (2012).
4 Fry (2014).
5 National Center for Education Statistics (2013b).
2

ollment is up, data on college graduation rates show that the majority of students who enter
community college or nonselective four-year public institutions do not receive degrees within
six years. 6
While the rises in high school completion and college enrollment rates paint a positive
picture on the academic front, youth unemployment rates tell a different story. In the aftermath
of the Great Recession, youth unemployment rates in the United States dramatically increased;
only about half of young people ages 16 to 24 held jobs in 2013. Among 16- to 19-year-olds,
labor-force participation dropped from 54 percent in 2000 to 34 percent in 2013. 7 There are a
number of reasons for the rise of youth unemployment. A share of this drop may be the result of
young people pursuing education at higher levels. Indeed, the share of young people who are
enrolled in school (high school or college) and who are also employed has dropped. Structural
changes in the labor market are also driving this trend, as job opportunities for high-skilled
workers have expanded while demand for less-skilled, blue-collar workers has shrunk. Some
segments of the young population are faring worse than others in employment. Black young
people are unemployed at almost twice the rate of white young people. 8
Though young people in general face a challenging labor market, disconnected young
people face particular challenges. Many come from disadvantaged families and communities
and have experienced a number of challenges and impediments to success in school and work
that their more affluent peers have not. Still, analyses of longitudinal data on young people
have shown that the majority of disconnected young people attempt to reconnect to education
and the labor market at some point. According to one study, two-thirds of disconnected young
people ultimately reconnected with education or the labor market, with the majority reconnecting
first through work. 9 This study used data collected before the Great Recession, so it is not
known how recent changes in the youth labor market have affected young people’s attempts to
reconnect.
Policies Affecting Disconnected Young People
Disconnected young people are a heterogeneous population with a range of experiences and risk
factors. This section provides a high-level summary of the federal, state, and local policies that
have an impact on them. As this paper focuses on programs for young people who are already
disconnected from education and the labor market, this section does not cover the numerous
programs and policies that focus on dropout prevention.
6 Community College Research Center (2015).
7 Hossain and Bloom (2015).
8 NPR (2014).
9 Hair et al. (2009).
3

Public Schools
The public school system is often the last point of “connection” for many disconnected
young people, and some of these young people will eventually attempt to reconnect to public
schools. Though data are not available at the national level on the precise number of dropouts
who return to school, local estimates from some cities and districts have found that between
one-third and one-half of dropouts attempt to reengage with the public school system at least
once. 10 However, there are limits on who is eligible to reconnect to the public school system.
Many states have age limits on who is eligible for public school education, leaving many young
people without this option. Still, for young people who have not “aged out,” the public schools
are a vital part of the system to reconnect disconnected young people.
Researchers and advocacy groups have described a number of ways that federal, state,
and local policies serve as obstacles to reconnecting young people to public school. Though
many educational policies are set at the state and district level, federal policy also plays a role.
The federal No Child Left Behind legislation requires schools to measure and report on Adequate
Yearly Progress, and schools face consequences if they fail to meet their targets. One
measure of Adequate Yearly Progress for a high school is its graduation rate, which is typically
measured over four years. Schools face a disincentive to reenrolling students who have dropped
out, because they are unlikely to graduate within that four-year time frame. However, states can
apply for permission to use an extended time frame of five to six years for the purposes of calculating
graduation rates. A 2012 report found that only 10 states had applied for and received
approval to use extended-year graduation rates in their Adequate Yearly Progress calculations. 11
Policies on how school funds are allocated to individual schools, which are often made
at the state or local level, also affect the opportunities for young people who want to reconnect
to public school. Advocates for disconnected young people have called for weighted-student
funding approaches as opposed to unweighted methods that use Average Daily Attendance. In
weighted-student funding, schools receive more funds per pupil for children with special needs
— such as low-income students, English-language learners, and those with learning disabilities.
In this way, schools receive a financial incentive to work with struggling students. California is
in the middle of implementing such a weighted approach to its school funding system. 12
Outside of funding, school district policies that offer increased flexibility can improve
opportunities for disconnected young people by lowering common barriers they face to reconnecting
with public schools. Many school districts have alternative schools that target the needs
of young people at risk of dropping out or those who are looking to reconnect. Though exact
numbers are not tracked at the national level, one estimate found that close to 40 percent of
10 Sparks (2015).
11 National Association of Secondary School Principals (2015).
12 WestEd and California State Board of Education (2015).
4

school districts offered an alternative option. 13 These programs may be competency-based (that
is, focused on helping students master subjects) rather than focused on keeping them in the
classroom for a certain amount of time, as a way to help them finish their degrees faster. Alternative
schools may offer flexibility in schedule, providing evening or online programs. As mentioned
above, age limits on eligibility may exclude older disconnected young people from these
services. Most states set their age limits at 21, but some states have elected to set higher or lower
age limits. Texas has the highest upper age limit at 26, while young people in Montana age
out of public school at 19. 14
School financing policies can also support disconnected young people by allowing public
school dollars to flow to non-public school providers that may be better positioned to meet
their needs, including public charter schools. Though such programs may be a better fit for
some young people, school districts have disincentives to referring students to those programs,
because they will then lose the funding associated with those students. Though more public
charter schools to serve out-of-school young people seem to have formed recently, it is hard to
pin down precise information on the number of these schools and the number of young people
they serve. These schools often serve as both dropout-prevention and dropout-recovery programs
— that is, they serve both students who were struggling in their district schools and are at
risk of dropping out, and those who have already dropped out and are reconnecting with school.
High School Equivalency Credentials
For many disconnected young people, reconnecting with education involves a high
school equivalency test, not a high school diploma. According to one study, young people who
were disconnected from education and the labor market at some point between the ages of 16
and 24 were more than twice as likely to have a high school equivalency by age 28 than young
people who had not experienced disconnection. 15 A high school equivalency may be more attainable
than a high school diploma, either because the young people have aged out of the public
school system or because they believe that they can finish a high school equivalency faster
than they could a high school diploma. 16 Many programs aimed at reconnecting disconnected
young people only offer high school equivalencies. However, studies have shown that high
school equivalencies do not have the same value as high school diplomas in the labor market. In
an attempt to address this discrepancy, 12 states currently offer high school equivalency recipients
high school diplomas, and such a policy is currently under consideration in the District of
Columbia.
13 Culbertson, d’Entremont, and Poulos (2014).
14 National Center for Education Statistics (2013a).
15 Belfield, Levin, and Rosen (2012).
16 Alternative schools and charter schools operating in the public school system may also offer a high
school equivalency option.
5

In 2014, the company offering the General Educational Development (GED) exam —
the most common high school equivalency test — changed the test to align it better with Common
Core standards. At the same time, test administration became completely computer-based
and fees rose. Since these changes, the number of people taking and passing the GED has
dropped significantly. 17 Some states are no longer using the GED test, and are instead using alternative
high school equivalency tests such as the TASC or the HiSET.
High school equivalency programs are housed in a number of types of institutions, including
school districts, community-based nonprofit organizations, and community colleges.
Recognizing that a high school equivalency should be a stepping stone to broader career goals,
some programs go beyond just preparing students for those exams and promote connections to
college or careers. Some programs, discussed later in this memo, integrate high school equivalency
and career pathways approaches, allowing students to both prepare for the equivalency
test and begin training for a career. Students usually do not have access to financial aid while
pursuing their high school equivalencies, but Congress recently restored Pell Grant eligibility
for students without educational credentials who enroll in career pathway programs that integrate
adult basic education with college-level course work. 18
Employment and Career Pathways
Past research has shown that disconnected young people tend to reconnect first with
employment, as opposed to education. Since this research took place before the Great Recession
and the structural changes in the labor market described earlier, it is hard to tell whether this
pattern still holds true. Still, experts agree that young people need the opportunity to connect to
employment, and a number of initiatives targeting disconnected young people focus on employment
and career pathways. The largest of these initiatives are federally funded programs
that combine academic and vocational training with paid work experience, for example Youth-
Build and Job Corps. Funding for these two programs, which together are estimated to serve
more than 70,000 young people annually, totaled nearly $1.8 billion in fiscal year 2015, a slight
increase over recent years. Studies of these programs will be discussed later in this paper.
Summer employment programs provide the first work experience of many young people.
Federal funding for summer jobs was cut in 1998, yet some cities continue to fund their
own summer jobs programs and have had to initiate lotteries to allocate the limited number of
slots available. But most young people who participate in summer employment programs are in
17 Turner and Kamenetz (2015).
18 McCarthy (2014).
6

school. Some summer jobs programs specifically target disconnected young people, but they
serve a very low percentage of the population of disconnected young people. 19
The revised Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act of 2014 (WIOA), which replaces
the Workforce Innovation Act (WIA) of 1998, will affect employment and training services
for disconnected young people. Changes took effect July 1, 2015. WIOA focuses more
sharply on young people who are out of school: It requires that a higher percentage of youth
funds go to programs serving “out-of-school youth” (75 percent, compared with 30 percent under
WIA). WIOA also raises the age of eligibility to 24 for out-of-school young people, and
relaxes some requirements on eligibility that will make it easier for disadvantaged young people
to benefit from WIOA funding. 20 For example, young people can meet the low-income eligibility
criteria by living in a high-poverty area; they do not need to prove that they themselves come
from low-income families. WIOA also adds some required program elements, like financial
literacy training and preparation for postsecondary education. Finally, WIOA changes the
standards used to measure program performance, adding “measurable skills gains” as a new
measure of progress, a change intended to encourage programs to serve populations with low
skill levels. 21
While WIOA could increase funding for services for disconnected young people, how
individual states implement it will determine the magnitude of its impact. For example, WIOA
requires that more funds go toward “out-of-school youth,” but leaves it to states to define that
population. Depending on how each state does define the population, young people who have
dropped out of school but have subsequently reenrolled in an alternative school may not be eligible
for WIOA funds. While WIOA stipulates that young people enrolled in YouthBuild or Job
Corps may be counted as “out-of-school,” young people in similar programs may not be eligible
under the WIOA definition. 22
Career pathways approaches also received increased emphasis in WIOA. Career
pathways approaches identify occupations where the supply of qualified applicants does not
meet labor-market demand, and tailor education and training programs for low-income, lowskill
populations to fill those gaps. Though career pathways approaches do not specifically
target disconnected young people, youth programs have been adopting these approaches.
Each pathway has multiple points of entry, so that workers of varying skill levels can join the
career path. For example, one program may target participants who do not yet have their high
school equivalency credentials, and a separate program will target participants with some college.
Career pathway approaches also offer multiple opportunities for workers to advance
19 González-Rivera (2014).
20 Bird, Foster, and Ganzglass (2014).
21 Interview with Don Spangler, Executive Director, National Youth Employment Center, 3/18/15.
22 Strumpf Associates: Center for Strategic Change and the Center for Youth and Communities (2015).
7

their education and move up the career ladder. Other elements of career pathway approaches
include assessments and services to guide participants and connect them with the support they
need to be successful, including help addressing nonacademic barriers to employment like a
lack of child care. 23
Special Populations
Some young people may be disconnected from school and work, but connected to other
institutions such as the foster care system or the juvenile and criminal justice systems. These
populations have particular risk factors that make their return to school or work especially difficult.
Young people leaving the foster care system are vulnerable, for example, because they
typically have not progressed far in school, have histories of mental health problems and substance
abuse, and lack family support. A number of legislative changes in the last few decades
have benefited young people in the foster care system. Since 1999, federal legislation has provided
states with more funding and greater flexibility to support young people as they left foster
care. This legislation includes the Fostering Connections to Success and Increasing Adoptions
Act of 2008, which allows states to keep young people in the foster care system until they are
21 and gives them access to funding for independent living programs. States also have access to
the Chafee Educational and Training Voucher Program to provide education and training
vouchers for young people up to 23 years old.
Young people leaving the juvenile and criminal justice systems also face significant
challenges. Research has shown that being in residential confinement (the juvenile equivalent of
prison) has a negative impact on young people’s education and employment outcomes. Since its
peak in 1995, the rate at which the United States confines young people in residential facilities
has dropped considerably. 24 Still, the United States confines young people at a higher rate than
other industrialized countries. Young people over 18 are likely to be in the adult criminal justice
system. Although imprisonment rates for 18- to 24-year-olds have dropped over the last decade,
huge disparities still exist between the United States and other industrialized countries. Black
males of this age group are imprisoned at rates six times higher than white males. 25
Disconnected young people who are parents are also a population of special concern. In
addition to the challenges that their nonparent peers face in reconnecting to work and school,
they have the added stress that comes with parenting and caring for young children. The lack of
resources these parents have to meet their own needs and those of their children places both
23 Center for Law and Social Policy (2014).
24 Annie E. Casey Foundation (2013).
25 Cook et al. (2014).
8

generations at risk and contributes to intergenerational cycles of poverty. Programs for disconnected
young parents typically take three forms: interventions targeting the parents, interventions
targeting their children, and two-generation programs that seek to serve both parents and
children. Coordinating services for both generations is challenging because the funding sources
for programs targeting each population are often administered separately. 26
Adolescent Development and Mental Health
New science is shedding light on how the brain continues to develop into adolescence,
with implications for programs aimed at disconnected young people. Research has shown that
adolescents must undergo a series of developmental tasks, including developing identity and
autonomy, identifying career goals, and gaining impulse control. At the same time as their
brains are working on these tasks, chemical changes to the brain encourage them to take risks.
Adult support can help adolescents navigate these challenges, but disconnected young people
often lack such adult support. 27 As will be discussed later, many programs attempt to provide
young people with the support they may lack from their families.
Recent efforts in the mental health field are raising awareness of the impact of trauma
on a young person’s life trajectory. Studies have demonstrated that exposure to traumatic events
has many adverse short- and long-term effects for children and adolescents. These studies have
led to federal efforts to increase trauma-focused care, including the National Child Traumatic
Stress Network. Programs are increasingly incorporating a trauma-informed approach into their
models.
Collaboration and Collective Impact
Recognizing that the policies affecting disconnected young people involve a broad
range of agencies and actors, states and communities across the country are implementing efforts
to foster collaboration across these systems. Collaboration is challenging; each stakeholder
brings to the table its own set of priorities, sources of funding, and definitions of success. Each
organization, agency, or school typically collects separate performance measures. It takes significant
effort for these actors to settle on common indicators to track progress and for them to
reach agreements to share data.
Recent initiatives indicate that collaborative approaches to meeting the needs of disconnected
young people are of increasing interest to the field. At the federal level, the White House
Council for Community Services focused on issues related to disconnected young people, and
the recommendations it released in 2012 stressed issues of collaboration and coordination. In-
26 Katz et al. (2013).
27 Jim Casey Youth Opportunities Initiative (2011).
9

terest in city-level Reengagement Centers is on the rise, and the Aspen Group’s Opportunity
Youth Incentive Fund is funding collective impact efforts in 21 cities.
III.
The Evidence Base on Programs and Practices for
Disconnected Young People
The preceding section described the range of policies that touch the lives of disconnected young
people. This section provides an overview of the evidence base on effective programs and practices
targeting these young people. First, the types of evaluations that are included in the scan
are described, including how each type of evaluation contributes to the evidence base. The review
of the evidence is then broken into two sections. The first section covers evidence relating
to specific programs or interventions, including evaluation efforts that are under way. The second
section discusses evidence related to system-level or collective impact approaches.
Types of Evaluations
The evidence on “what works” has mostly come from evaluations of publicly funded programs
that have the scale to undergo randomized controlled trials. Though smaller programs within
school districts, community-based organizations, and community colleges serve many disconnected
young people, few of these programs have been formally evaluated. This section gives a
brief overview of the common types of evaluations and the research questions they answer.
Considered the “gold standard” of evaluation, randomized controlled trials can demonstrate
a program’s impact on a certain population. In a randomized controlled trial, study participants
are randomly assigned either to a program group that is eligible to participate in the intervention,
or to a control group that is not eligible to participate in the intervention. Since the program
and control groups are formed at random, any differences in outcomes between the two
groups can reasonably be attributed to the effect of the program and not to some underlying variable.
This type of evaluation requires sample sizes that may be prohibitive for smaller organizations.
A quasi-experimental evaluation does not require randomization. Instead it creates a
comparison group in some other way, for example by examining the administrative records of
populations with characteristics similar to the population targeted by the intervention. This
comparison group is then compared with the program group to estimate program effects.
Though quasi-experimental evaluations avoid some of the challenges of randomized controlled
trials, without randomization it is difficult to form a comparison group that is not biased in some
10

way. Results from quasi-experimental evaluations should be interpreted with some caution.
Such evaluations may be more or less rigorous depending on the study design used.
An implementation or process study is an evaluation that focuses on a program’s implementation,
examining whom it serves, how it operates, and how well it achieves its intended
goals. Implementation studies may include data on participant outcomes. They may stand alone,
or may be combined with impact studies. Though an implementation study does not assess an
intervention’s impact, it can offer a valuable opportunity to learn about best practices and about
what factors facilitate or impede successful program implementation. An implementation study
that includes in-depth interviews or focus groups with disconnected young people also reveals
the needs and experiences of the population served by the program.
The evaluations discussed next include randomized controlled trials, quasi-experimental
studies, and implementation evaluations. Only evaluations conducted by third-party evaluators
are included. While many programs report their outcomes on websites or other forums, such
self-reported data were not included in this evidence scan.
Evidence on Programs
This section focuses on evidence concerning specific programs that serve disconnected young
people, specifically on findings from evaluations of programs that are currently operating. 28 The
discussion is divided into four main sections, organized by the program or intervention’s primary
target outcome. Employment-focused programs are discussed first, followed by educationfocused
programs. A third section focuses on outreach and case management models, which
often serve the most disconnected segment of the population. A fourth section focuses on behavioral
and therapeutic interventions. A summary of this information is provided in Appendix
A. It should be noted that these categories are arbitrary in some ways — programs often target
multiple outcomes. A synthesis of “what works” is provided at the end of the section.
The studies covered here largely focus on education- or employment-related outcomes.
These outcomes are often the easiest to measure because programs generally already collect
data on them. There are also state and federal sources of data on these outcomes; using data that
are already collected as standard practice lowers the cost of evaluations and can allow easier
comparisons across programs. However, a program may produce outcomes in other aspects of a
young person’s life that are harder to measure, but that are linked to a person’s well-being. The
Youth Transition Funder’s Group Well-Being Framework outlines these areas, which include
28 Evaluations of programs that are no longer operating were mostly excluded from the scan, though some
evaluations of discontinued programs found impacts on employment and education outcomes. These discontinued
programs include the National Supported Work Demonstration, JOBSTART, and the Youth Incentive
Entitlement Pilot Project.
11

social development, mental health, physical health, and safety. 29 A limited number of studies
have measured outcomes in these areas and they are mentioned when applicable.
Employment-Focused Programs
As mentioned above, youth employment rates are at historic lows. Though some stereotypes
portray disconnected young people as being uniformly high school dropouts, according to
a recent study, 40 percent of the disconnected young people surveyed already had secondary
credentials (high school diplomas or high school equivalency credentials). 30 Though they had
completed their secondary education, they were not connected to work or postsecondary education.
The same survey found that, regardless of their education levels, more than half of disconnected
young people were looking for full-time jobs. 31
This section focuses on evidence regarding programs that specifically target employment.
While many programs combine education and career training (and these are discussed in
later sections of this paper) there are few programs that have employment as their primary focus.
The populations served by these programs tend to fall at the “least disconnected” end of the
disconnection spectrum, as many of them require participants to have a secondary credential to
enroll.
Year Up, which operates in 14 cities, provides participants ages 18 to 24 with six
months of training in information technology and finance, followed by a six-month internship.
Participants need to have secondary credentials to qualify for the program. Each participant receives
a stipend tied to a performance contract during both the training and internship phases.
Staff advisers help young people with both personal and professional issues, and each participant
is also paired with a mentor. A small random assignment evaluation found that Year Up
participants had higher earnings and were more likely to be working full time a year after program
participation than members of a control group. 32 At the three-year mark, the program
group had higher earnings, mostly as the result of higher wages. However, the program group
was less likely to be attending college than the control group. The three-year follow-up findings
should be interpreted with some caution, as the study had a short embargo period (the period
during which control group members were prevented from joining the program); nearly a third
of control group members ultimately ended up participating in Year Up. 33 Efforts to learn more
about the effectiveness of Year Up are under way. Year Up has eight locations participating in
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Pathways for Advancing Careers and Education
study (formerly the Innovative Strategies for Increasing Self-Sufficiency study), a ran-
29 Langford, Badeau, and Legters (2015).
30 Bridgeland and Milano (2012).
31 Bridgeland and Milano (2012).
32 Roder and Elliott (2011).
33 Roder and Elliott (2014).
12

dom assignment evaluation of nine career pathways programs. The evaluation will follow the
study sample for 30 months, and early impact results are expected in 2016. 34
A randomized controlled trial of three sector-based training and employment programs
found impacts on employment and earnings gains for young adults (ages 18 to 26) in two of the
three programs evaluated: Jewish Vocational Service in Boston and Per Scholas in New York
City. 35 These programs offered a combination of sector-specific training (health care in the case
of Jewish Vocational Service and information technology in the case of Per Scholas), internships,
job placement, and postplacement support. The interventions did not specifically target
young people and, like Year Up, they required participants to enter the program with secondary
credentials.
Other evaluations of employment programs for young people are under way. Two programs
in the Subsidized and Transitional Employment Demonstration (STED) evaluation
(which MDRC is leading and which includes a random assignment design) focus on young
people. The Young Adult Internship Program serves young adults in New York City who are
disconnected from school and work, many of whom have high school diplomas or high school
equivalency credentials. The nine-month program uses a cohort structure (that is, it starts groups
of young people at the same time so they progress together) and starts with an assessment of
employability skills and social-support needs. Work-readiness training and supportive counseling
are provided for the duration of the program. Participants engage in a 10- to 14-week paid
internship, after which they receive placement support from the program to connect with education,
advanced training, or employment. Impact results are expected in 2017. Chicago’s Bridges
to Pathways program, also in the STED evaluation, is a six-month transitional jobs program for
young men who have recently been incarcerated. The program includes online educational support,
subsidized jobs, mentoring, and social-emotional/cognitive behavioral programs. Impact
results are also expected in 2017.
Education-Focused Programs
Most disconnected young people lack secondary credentials, which greatly impedes
their ability to connect to work or college. Employers may require a high school diploma or
high school equivalency credential, putting young people without one at a disadvantage when
applying for jobs. Not having a secondary credential can also prevent them from entering postsecondary
education and receiving financial aid.
A longitudinal study of disconnected young people found that by age 28, nearly threequarters
had received high school diplomas and 10 percent had high school equivalency creden-
34 Interview with Karen Gardiner, Abt Associates, 3/20/2015.
35 Maguire et al. (2010).
13

tials. 36 These numbers indicate that a strong majority of young people who disconnect from
school eventually achieve secondary credentials.
There are multiple ways young people can achieve secondary credentials. Young people
who have not aged out have the option of returning to public school, and many are served
through alternative schools, which are either operated by the district or by charter organizations.
The number of alternative schools that target at-risk and disconnected young people has increased
in recent years. But for some young people, returning to school is not an option, either
because they have aged out or because they are reluctant to return to institutions that were not
able to meet their needs the first time around. For these young people, a number of program options
can lead to a secondary credential. These programs vary in their structure and approach,
but roughly fall into two categories: comprehensive programs that specifically target young
people, and programs that target postsecondary education and serve a range of ages. Some of
these programs incorporate career pathway approaches.
Comprehensive Youth Programs
Programs in this category specifically target young people and have age limits on eligibility.
They tend to combine support services to address participants’ academic, employment,
and life goals. Many of these programs are federally funded and operate at the national scale,
and evaluation data from studies of these programs offer lessons on promising strategies to help
disconnected young people.
Two comprehensive youth programs are residential: Job Corps and National Guard
Youth ChalleNGe. Job Corps is the largest federal program for disconnected young people,
serving more than 60,000 each year across 125 centers. Participants can earn high school diplomas
or equivalency credentials and receive career training in one of many fields, such as
business, health, or construction. Participants also get health care, stipends, career counseling,
and transitional support for a year following graduation. A four-year random assignment study
found that the program increased the amount of education and training participants received,
and increased literacy rates. The program generated employment and earning gains through a
four-year follow-up period, but these effects were not sustained after the end of that follow-up
period, except for young people who entered the program when they were 20 to 24 years old. 37
In ChalleNGe, participants engage in a five-month, intensive residential program that
includes eight core components: education, life-skills training, leadership-skills development,
community service, citizenship building, physical fitness, health and hygiene, and job-skills
training and career exploration. The program also helps participants set up structured mentoring
36 Belfield, Levin, and Rosen (2012).
37 Schochet, Burghardt, and McConnell (2006).
14

for at least a year with mentors of their choice in their own communities so they have some
support after they leave. A three-year random assignment study found that participants were
more likely than their control group counterparts to have obtained high school credentials, to
have earned college credits, and to be working. Their earnings were also 20 percent higher than
control group members. 38 The U.S. Department of Labor will soon be testing Job ChalleNGe,
an adaptation of the National Guard Youth ChalleNGe program that will add five months of
occupational training to the core ChalleNGe program. An evaluation of the demonstration is
planned, with results expected in 2020.
Conservation Corps targets out-of-school young people, offering participants temporary,
full-time subsidized work in community service projects, along with basic adult education
and opportunities to earn college credits, case management, and job-readiness training. An impact
evaluation in the late 1990s found that more than a year after entering the study, Corps participants
were 26 percent more likely than control group members to be employed and were
also working more hours. The program produced the largest impact on young black males and
was found to be cost-effective by producing a net benefit to society. 39 However, the positive
results were called into question by a 2011 evaluation of Conservation Corps that found the
program had no significant impacts on the probability of its participants being employed or in
school roughly 30 months after they entered the study. 40
Civic Justice Corps was a variant of the Conservation Corps model directed at formerly
incarcerated young people and those involved in the court system. It offered a combination of
job-readiness activities, community service, and internships. Participants were supported by a
stipend while in the program. A study of the program in New York City found that while the
program had some modest positive effects on employment, it did not have any effect on education
or criminal justice outcomes. 41 Civic Justice Corps programs are not currently active.
YouthBuild is a privately and federally funded program that combines construction and
vocational training with academic services, counseling and supportive services, youth development
activities (that is, activities that foster leadership or that give young people the chance to
form strong relationships with adults), stipends, and support during transition. An impact evaluation
is under way of the federal YouthBuild program in 75 locations. The evaluation includes
an extensive implementation study, which was published in March 2015. The implementation
study does not include information on participant outcomes, but offers a detailed description of
the diversity of academic and training activities offered and the program model’s focus on youth
development. The implementation study also described how YouthBuild programs typically
38 Millenky, Bloom, Muller-Ravett, and Broadus (2011).
39 Jastrzab, Masker, Blomquist, and Orr (1996).
40 Jastrzab, Masker, Blomquist, and Orr (1996).
41 Bauer et al. (2014).
15

focus on recruiting young people who are “ready for change.” 42 An interim impact report is expected
in 2017 and the final report is expected in 2018.
Project Rise combines education, work-readiness training, and paid internships. The
yearlong program targets 16- to 24-year-olds who do not have high school diplomas or high
school equivalency credentials. Participants start with career-readiness and educational programs
before they are placed in paid internships; continued participation in the internship is
contingent on a young person’s consistent engagement in education. The program started in
New York City and is being replicated in Newark, New Jersey, and Kansas City, Missouri, in
connection with funding from the Social Innovation Fund. An implementation study of the
program released in fall 2015 found that it was challenging to implement the internship component
as intended. The report also describes difficulties the programs had sustaining the engagement
of participants, including the finding that participants with child care needs faced
particular challenges. 43
Two comprehensive youth programs in California are also undergoing evaluations. The
Los Angeles Reconnections Career Academy targets high school dropouts ages 16 to 24, reconnecting
them to school and subsidizing vocational training in the health care field. Implementation,
impact, and cost-effectiveness studies of the effort are under way, funded by a Workforce
Innovation Fund grant. Linking Innovation and Knowledge (@LIKE), is a program in three California
counties for 18- to 24-year-olds who have been out of school and work for more than 90
days. It includes a mix of educational and employment services. Each participant works with a
life coach. A quasi-experimental study and cost-benefit study are planned for 2016. 44
As mentioned earlier, many alternative schools target disconnected young people, offering
them the chance to earn high school diplomas or high school equivalency credentials. Some
school districts have developed “GED Plus” programs, which offer students a way to earn their
high school equivalency credentials and include other forms of support to connect them to the
next step on a college or career pathway. GED Plus programs also often include partnerships
with community-based organizations serving young people. Examples of this type of initiative
include the Pathways to Graduation programs (formerly GED Plus) in New York City. Though
public school systems provide data on outcomes of individual schools, there are few independent
evaluations of programs for disconnected young people in public schools.
One evaluation of a network of alternative schools in Florida is under way and will be
publishing results in coming years. The PACE Center for Girls is a statewide program that provides
academic services, counseling, and transition support in a gender-responsive environment
42 Wiegand et al. (2015).
43 Manno, Yang, and Bangser (2015).
44 Workforce Innovation Fund (n.d.).
16

to girls ages 14 to 18 who are at risk of dropping out of high school or who have already
dropped out. It is currently undergoing a random assignment study in connection with a grant
from the Social Innovation Fund. The evaluation includes an implementation study, impact
study, and cost-effectiveness analysis. An interim report that includes early impacts and implementation
findings is due in 2017.
Postsecondary Pathways
Postsecondary education has a high value in today’s labor market, where nearly 60 percent
of all job openings require some postsecondary training. 45 Most disconnected young people
lack experience with college, 46 and researchers have shown using longitudinal data that by age
28, only 1 percent of them have obtained associate’s or bachelor’s degrees, compared with 36
percent of other young people. 47 Disconnected young people can face a long road to obtaining a
postsecondary credential. Young people who already have secondary credentials may find that
they need developmental education before they can enroll in degree programs, while those who
lack secondary credentials often must first obtain them before they can qualify for postsecondary
education. However, new innovations in adult education are seeking to remove some of
these obstacles and improve the transition to postsecondary education. Unlike the comprehensive
youth programs described above, most of these programs do not specifically target disconnected
young people, but serve a range of adult learners.
One set of programs targets students who are seeking high school equivalency credentials.
Equivalency-to-college bridge programs have shown promise in both increasing equivalency
exam pass rates and persistence into postsecondary education. Bridge programs take place
on college campuses and include college preparatory components, typically in a cohort-based
approach. 48 Programs usually offer students additional forms of support, such as career and college
counseling. Recent evaluations have shown that bridge programs are promising models for
reconnecting high school dropouts to education. A random assignment evaluation of the GED
Bridge to Health and Business program at LaGuardia Community College found higher rates of
GED completion and college entry for participants compared with students in LaGuardia’s traditional
GED course. The bridge program included full-time instructors (compared with adjuncts
in the traditional GED course) and individual career and transition counseling. As opposed
to the generic worksheets used in many high school equivalency programs, students in
the GED Bridge program learned by using materials specific to the health care or business track
45 Carnevale, Smith, and Strohl (2010).
46 Bridgeland and Milano (2012).
47 Belfield, Levin, and Rosen (2012).
48 Students in high school equivalency bridge programs do not quality for Pell grants since those programs
do not lead directly to postsecondary credentials.
17

they were considering pursuing. 49 The program did not specifically target young people; the
average study participant was 27 years old. A replication of the program is currently being tested
in Wisconsin, and early results will be available in 2018.
Concurrent-enrollment programs take bridge programs a step further, allowing students
to enroll in college classes while they take classes to obtain their high school equivalency credentials.
50 These models allow participants to earn postsecondary credentials more quickly by
permitting them to engage in postsecondary education while they work toward secondary credentials.
Students can enroll in different types of college classes in different programs; some
programs limit college classes to noncredit “student success” courses designed to build the skills
students will need to be successful in college. 51
Though many concurrent-enrollment programs exist, there is little evidence on their effectiveness.
I-BEST, a concurrent-enrollment program that incorporates a career pathways approach,
has shown promise. First developed in Washington State, I-BEST integrates basic skills
instruction with career and technical education. Students also receive other forms of support,
including transition support. Students receive college credit for the portion of their time that is
spent in career and technical training. A quasi-experimental study found that program participants
were more likely to make learning gains and earn college credits than those in a comparison
group. I-BEST does not specifically target young people. The mean age of participants in
the I-BEST study was 32. 52 The I-BEST model is currently being tested as part of the U.S. Department
of Health and Human Services’ Pathways for Advancing Careers and Education
study, and is also being expanded and tested in a number of locations outside of Washington
State.
Unlike GED Bridge and I-BEST, programs that serve a range of ages, a couple of
programs specifically focus on connecting disconnected young people to postsecondary education.
Gateway to College is a national program where students without high school credentials
have the opportunity to earn high school diplomas and college credits simultaneously.
Students attend classes on the college campus and also receive comprehensive support services.
An implementation study of the program, conducted in connection with a Social Innovation
Fund grant, was published in late 2015. 53 The study provides lessons on student engagement
and replication.
49 Martin and Broadus (2013).
50 Students in concurrent enrollment programs that use a career pathways approach qualify for Pell grants
because the programs do lead to postsecondary credentials.
51 Rutschow and Crary-Ross (2014).
52 Jenkins, Zeidenberg, and Kienzl (2009); Rutschow and Crary-Ross (2014).
53 Willard, Bayes, and Martinez (2015).
18

Several of the comprehensive youth programs mentioned in the previous section include
pathways to postsecondary education as part of their models. The Gates Foundation’s
Postsecondary Success Initiative provided funding to 15 community-based organizations that
were already operating youth programs (including seven YouthBuild programs), to strengthen
the pathway for their participants into postsecondary education. Grantees were to implement a
Back on Track model, which includes enriched academic preparation to prepare students for
college success, bridge programs to support their transition into college, and follow-up support
during the first year of college. An analysis of short-term outcome data found that nearly 75
percent of participants received a secondary credential, and nearly half enrolled in postsecondary
programs. 54
Basic Skills Programs
The programs described above target young people who either have secondary credentials
or have academic skill levels that would allow them to obtain secondary credentials within
a year. Many disconnected young people do not have the literacy or numeracy required to be
eligible for or successful in these programs. Young people who have not aged out of the school
system have the option of returning to school to improve their basic skills, and may be served
through alternative schools operated by their districts or by charter organizations. As mentioned
earlier, there are limited evaluation data on the effectiveness of these schools for disconnected
young people. Meanwhile, a few programs target young people with low skills outside of the
school system.
One such program is New York City’s Young Adult Literacy (YAL) program. The
YAL program targets 16- to 24-year-old young adults who read at the fourth- through eighthgrade
levels, and serves them until they are academically ready to enter a program that prepares
them for a high school equivalency test. The year-round program offers up to 15 hours of literacy
and numeracy instruction each week, along with social support services, life-skills and workreadiness
training, a paid internship, and some modest incentives. A correlational analysis of
program data in 2012 found that YAL program participants had increased 1.41 grade levels in
literacy and over one grade level in numeracy. MDRC conducted an implementation study of
the program in 2014 and found that most program locations did not find it challenging to recruit
participants. This finding reinforces the notion that demand exists for programs to serve lowliteracy
young people. The study examined the program in five locations, finding that program
locations with stronger outcomes shared some features, including strong leaders, being able to
draw on additional support from sponsor organizations to benefit the program and participants,
strong academic staffs, and transition services. YAL was based on a now discontinued New
York City program called the Community Education Pathways to Success (CEPS). An outcome
54 Center for Youth and Community (2013).
19

evaluation of CEPS also found that the program improved participants’ literacy and math scores
and was successful in moving a subset of participants into high school equivalency programs. 55
Outreach and Case Management Models
The programs described in the previous sections generally serve young people who are
actively seeking opportunities to reconnect to school or work. As longitudinal studies have
shown, the majority of young people who are disconnected from education and the labor market
at some point eventually reconnect with one or the other. However, a portion of the population
— which one study estimated at 10 percent — is chronically disconnected. 56 There are very few
programs targeting these young people and even less evidence of what works for engaging
them. The few programs targeting very disconnected young people take an intervention or case
management approach. Rather than providing employment training or academic services, these
programs focus on providing young people with case managers who work with them intensively
to address the barriers they face to achieving their goals.
Roca in Boston is one organization that takes a proactive approach to connecting with
young people. Its Intervention Model is designed to reach those young people who are the most
persistently disconnected. At the heart of the model are the youth workers who conduct “relentless
outreach” to at-risk young people, in an effort to form transformational relationships with
them. 57 Roca has been through an implementation study that documented the intervention’s logic
model and the resources needed to provide its services. Roca’s effectiveness will be evaluated
through a new Pay for Success initiative that started in 2014. As part of the initiative, Roca will
provide its Intervention Model to young men involved in the adult probation system or leaving
the juvenile justice system. The initiative includes a random assignment design where eligible
participants will be assigned to either the program or control group, and the program will be
paid based on Roca’s ability to achieve impacts on employment and recidivism (that is, the rate
at which participants commit new crimes or are reincarcerated). Data on educational outcomes
will also be gathered. 58
The Safe and Successful Youth Initiative is another outreach program in Massachusetts.
It targets young people in 11 communities who are identified as being at high risk of involvement
in gun violence. Street outreach workers find the targeted young people and connect them
with a host of support services, including trauma counseling, intensive supervision, employment
and education services, and support for their families. 59 A quasi-experimental evaluation found
that young people with similar risk profiles were 42 percent more likely to be incarcerated than
55 Campbell, Kibler, and Weisman (2009).
56 Belfield, Levin, and Rosen (2012).
57 Parker (2015).
58 Patrick (2014).
59 Campie et al. (2013).
20

those who were involved with the initiative. The evaluation also found that communities in the
program experienced a reduction in the number of victims of violent crimes. 60
Youth Villages provides a number of programs for emotionally and behaviorally troubled
children in 13 states. MDRC is conducting a random assignment evaluation of its transitional
living program, a case management program for young people aging out of foster care or
exiting the juvenile justice system. The program provides intensive case management that begins
with a comprehensive assessment and the development of an individual treatment plan,
weekly sessions with a case manager that may include counseling, and connection to other
forms of support. The impact study, which measured a range of outcomes associated with wellbeing,
found that the program boosted earnings, increased housing stability and economic wellbeing,
and improved some outcomes related to health and safety. 61 A final report that includes a
second year of follow-up and a cost-benefit analysis will be available in 2016.
The Latin American Youth Center in Washington, DC, is conducting a random assignment
evaluation of its Promotor Pathway program in connection with a Social Innovation Fund
grant. The Promotor Pathway program is a long-term case management program, where “Promotores”
(staff members) work one-on-one with young people to address their barriers to education
and employment and connect them to services. Promotores are meant to work with
young people for a long time — four to six years. An impact evaluation of the program is due to
publish results in early 2016.
Home visiting programs also take a case management approach to working with lowincome
women who are pregnant or have young children. Though models vary, the general approach
is that a trained home visitor develops a long-term relationship with a mother and offers
support in a variety of forms, possibly including guidance on prenatal care, education about
child development, and connections to other services to help the mother reach her educational
and career goals. Numerous home visiting models have demonstrated their effectiveness. 62
Though these programs do not specifically target disconnected young people, there is considerable
overlap between the populations of disconnected young people and young mothers. Some
organizations have designed home visiting programs specifically to target young populations.
For example, Roca operates two home visiting programs for young mothers. 63 Through there is
a strong evidence base for home visiting programs, evaluations of home visiting programs specifically
targeting disconnected young people are not available.
60 American Institutes for Research (2015).
61 Jacobs, Skemer, and Courtney (2015).
62 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2015).
63 Roca Inc. (2015).
21

Behavioral Interventions
Many mental health and behavioral interventions are considered to be “evidencebased,”
and these are increasingly making their way into programs for young people. Programs
targeting disconnected young people, including those mentioned above, may incorporate these
evidence-based models into their services. While the evidence on many of these interventions
includes random assignment evaluations, the interventions may not have been tested on young
people who were very disconnected from education and the labor market. Rarely are these evidence-based
programs the sole service that a young person will receive — they are often combined
with other forms of support.
One example of an evidence-based behavioral intervention is Becoming a Man, an inschool
life-skills program that was shown in a randomized controlled trial to reduce violent
crime and weapons arrests and increase school achievement. 64 Because Becoming a Man was
tested on an in-school population, it is unclear whether the intervention would have a similar
effect on out-of-school young people. Some programs for at-risk girls implement a curriculum
called Girls Circle that has shown improvements in outcomes related to drug use and selfconfidence.
65
Cognitive behavioral therapy is an umbrella term for a therapeutic approach that targets
the client’s thinking approach and behavior. It has been adapted into a variety of specified
treatment models, many of which are considered evidence-based. Meta-analyses of cognitive
behavioral programs have found them to be effective in reducing recidivism, particularly when
they were implemented with quality and fidelity. 66 Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral
Therapy, for example, has been shown to be effective in reducing the mental health effects of
exposure to trauma, something many disconnected young people suffer from.
Motivational interviewing is another approach that youth programs have incorporated
into their models. Motivational interviewing aims to help clients identify and change behaviors
that make it harder for them to achieve their personal goals. It has been implemented around the
world for more than 30 years, and has been found effective in numerous experimental studies.
Like cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing has been adapted into a range of
specified treatment models.
Multisystemic Therapy is an intervention for teens involved in the juvenile justice system.
It combines cognitive behavioral therapy, behavior management training, and family therapy
to address the many issues in a young person’s life that may have an impact on his or her
64 Center for Law and Social Policy (2014).
65 Logue (2002).
66 Landenberger and Lipsey (2005).
22

ehavior. Multisystemic Therapy has been subject to many random assignment studies and has
been found to be effective in reducing arrest rates and out-of-home placements. 67
The nation’s first social impact bond program, the Adolescent Behavioral Learning Experience
in New York City’s Riker’s Island jail, tested a cognitive behavioral intervention to
reduce recidivism. Program implementation was led by MDRC; the Vera Institute of Justice
conducted an evaluation using a quasi-experimental design. Results released in 2015 found that
the program did not have an impact on recidivism. 68
Some parenting programs have also shown promise in improving outcomes for both
parents and children, and these programs may help young parents. Triple P is an evidence-based
parenting program that can be tailored to populations in a variety of circumstances. The program
trains parents in skills they can use to manage their children’s behaviors using a positive
approach grounded in developmental theory. 69
Synthesis of “What Works”
A synthesis of the studies discussed above reveals that a number of evaluations have found impacts
on participant outcomes, though these impacts may have been modest, short-lived, or
both. As others have pointed out, it may be unrealistic to believe that a program of relatively
short duration will have an impact that lasts throughout a four-year follow up period. Because
these programs have multiple components and the evaluations were not set up to test each component
separately, it is difficult to disentangle which aspects of the program were most critical
to success. Despite these limitations, and even though the programs targeted different segments
of the population, it is possible to identify some broad features successful programs shared:
• Opportunities for paid work and the use of financial incentives. Many youth
programs — including Youth Corps, Job Corps, and Year Up — offer a stipend
or other paid work experience. The paid work in one of these programs
may be young people’s first exposure to work, giving them experience that
they can use to advance themselves when they leave the program. Additionally,
financial incentives may boost engagement in the program by meeting
some of a young person’s financial needs so he or she can focus on the program.
They may also serve as an incentive to boost attendance and the completion
of program milestones.
67 MST (2015). “Out-of-home placements” is a broad term that encompasses foster care, group homes, and
shelters — situations in which a child is removed from the home.
68 Vera Institute of Justice (2015).
69 Triple P (2015).
23

• Strong links among education, training, and the job market. Evidence suggests
that programs that connect training to identifiable opportunities in the
local labor market — career pathways approaches — are more likely to
achieve strong employment outcomes. Year Up designs its training curricula
with input from corporate partners and gets employer commitments to sponsor
and provide on-the-job training. Successful high school equivalency or
developmental education programs have incorporated career pathway approaches.
• Youth development approaches. Successful programs address the developmental
needs of young people, many of whom are facing difficult family and
life circumstances. Youth development approaches include offering young
people leadership opportunities within the program and the opportunity to develop
trusted relationships with adults through mentoring. Features like these
are included in the programs of Year Up and ChalleNGe.
• Comprehensive support services. Successful programs also address young
people’s barriers to participation. These barriers may include a young person’s
difficulties in meeting basic needs such as transportation, child care, and
food. Other forms of support may include connecting young people to physical
or mental health care. For example, Year Up has social workers on staff to
provide counseling and connect young people to the resources they need.
Youth Villages’ Transitional Living program provides intensive case management
in weekly sessions.
• Support after placement. Support after participants are placed in either employment
or education has been another feature of successful programs including
Job Corps, GED Bridge to Health and Business, ChalleNGe, and
Year Up.
Findings from Implementation Studies
While the impact components of these evaluations help reveal the programs’ potential
to improve outcomes in education, employment, or other areas, implementation studies can
shed light on aspects of program delivery that facilitate success or impede program implementation.
These findings can be useful to programs and funders seeking to understand how best to
support effective program implementation or expand a program to a larger scale. A review of
the implementation studies cited above yielded some common themes:
• Outreach and enrollment practices can limit the populations that programs
serve. Implementation studies can provide considerable information on the
24

populations that programs serve. Limited resources for outreach can mean
that programs serve people who are motivated to apply on their own. Many of
the programs described also have multistep admissions processes requiring
young people to return multiple times and demonstrate their “readiness for
change.” As a result, young people who are not sufficiently motivated often
drop out during the application process. Few of the programs described above
serve young people who fall on the “very disconnected” end of the spectrum.
• Keeping young people engaged in a program long enough to benefit is a central
challenge. Disconnected young people, even the most motivated, experience
a host of barriers to engagement. Financial incentives are one way that
programs encourage engagement. Cohort approaches, where young people
start and go through a program together, may help keep participants involved
by building a sense of community among them. Having staff members who
reflect participants’ experiences and play the role of stable, caring adults in
their lives can also promote engagement.
• Staffing is a persistent challenge. The implementation studies describe how
staff members often serve as mentors and proxy parents for participants.
However, the studies also describe the challenges presented by staff turnover.
The YouthBuild implementation study found that half of programs had issues
with staff turnover. Similarly, an evaluation of Our Piece of the Pie in Hartford
found that turnover among youth development specialists was very disruptive
to the young people in the program. 70 Staff turnover also affects transition
support. Studies have described how, if a young person is connected to a
staff member and that staff member leaves the program, the young person is
less likely to seek support from the program after he or she is no longer actively
engaged with it.
• Programs need to address young people’s barriers to participation, particularly
their lack of transportation and child care. Interviews with program staff
members and participants reveal the many barriers to participation that young
people face. A lack of transportation is one of the ones most often mentioned.
Though programs may provide bus passes to help young people pay for public
transportation, in areas underserved by public transit the lack of affordable
transit options can severely limit their participation in school and work. For
young parents, child care is also a common impediment to sustained program
70 Center for Health, Intervention, and Prevention (2009).
25

participation, and many communities lack quality and affordable child care
options.
• Partnerships in the community can help meet young people’s varied needs.
Disconnected young people need many forms of support, many more than can
be provided directly by one program. Implementation studies found that partnerships
with other agencies and programs can make it possible for youth
programs to meet young people’s needs — but some partnerships are more effective
than others. A recent process study of Job Corps found that higherperforming
centers had partners that shared space with them. Partnerships also
come with challenges. The YouthBuild implementation study found that programs
that relied on partners to furnish work sites had a more difficult time
customizing training to the needs of participants.
Evidence from Evaluations of Collective Impact Approaches
Those trying to meet the needs of disconnected young people increasingly recognize the importance
of improving connections among the community systems that serve them. This section
describes community-wide efforts, also called collective impact approaches, and evaluation lessons
from those efforts. System-level or collective impact approaches do not lend themselves
easily to impact evaluations. Since these efforts target the entire population of a city or neighborhood,
random assignment of individuals is not possible. Instead, quasi-experimental studies
may be used, relying on comparison groups in localities with similar characteristics. Good comparison
groups can be challenging to identify and the results of such studies should therefore be
interpreted with caution. Additionally, since these efforts involve multiple stakeholders and
programs, it is difficult to determine which aspects of a collective impact effort are more effective
than others.
Past Efforts
The Youth Opportunity Initiative (YO Initiative) offers some insight into the impact of
community-level efforts targeting disconnected young people. In 2000, the U.S. Department of
Labor funded community-wide efforts to provide comprehensive services to at-risk young
people in 36 communities across the country. The YO Initiative was designed to give a “saturation
effect” to the communities (meaning that services would be concentrated within a geographical
area), so that the initiative would have an impact not only on people who received
services directly but also on the people connected with them (so called “peer effects”). Efforts
were to be coordinated across systems, and were to involve public, private, and nonprofit organizations.
Each community had to create a center for young people that served as a meeting
place and a place to deliver services. Grantees were to include supportive services such as case
26

management and mentoring in their delivery models. The initiative ended in 2005 and has not
been funded since. 71
The YO Initiative grants were subject to an extensive evaluation funded by the Department
of Labor that included ethnography, a process study, and a quasi-experimental impact
study using comparison communities. The evaluation found that the participating communities
reached 52 percent of their out-of-school young people. Due to the recession that occurred during
the study period, most employment outcomes changed negatively during the study period.
But relative to comparison communities, young people in YO Initiative communities fared better
— or at least less badly. Young people in the YO Initiative communities also fared better on
some measures related to education. However, there seemed to be some negative effects in YO
Initiative communities, including decreases in full-time employment rates for some groups of
young people.
The Center for Law and Social Policy surveyed the communities toward the end of the
grant period. Communities reported several positive results of their participation in the program,
including mobilizing stakeholders, blending resources and staffing to support the delivery of
youth services, and connecting young people to alternative education programs and work experiences.
Challenges reported included finding mentors to work with young people, managing
employer expectations of young people’s skills, and creating and funding interventions for the
hardest-to-serve young people. 72
Current Efforts
There are several efforts under way that use many of the same principles as the YO Initiative.
One example is Reengagement Centers, which are city-level efforts to put out-of-school
young people on multiple pathways to continue their education. Comprehensive in their approach,
Reengagement Centers reach out to disconnected young people, assess their needs, and
connect them with appropriate services, including various opportunities to continue their education,
mentoring programs, employment and internship programs, and other services. These centers
are tailored to the circumstances of individual communities, but include the involvement of
multiple agencies and community organizations. The formation of successful initiatives starts
with the planning process. It requires engagement from a wide net of stakeholders; partnerships
with school districts, community colleges, and other service providers; adequate funding; and
the right staff and location. The National League of Cities gathers data from the Reengagement
Centers in its network, and according to 2013-2014 school year data, 15 centers reported reaching
more than 20,000 young people, placing more than 10,000 in education or training programs.
Seventy percent of those young people were still enrolled or had completed a credential
71 Jackson et al. (2007).
72 Harris (2006).
27

y the end of the reporting period. 73 Though these outcomes are positive, since Reengagement
Centers touch multiple institutions it is difficult to determine which outcomes the Reengagement
Centers are directly responsible for. 74
Project U-Turn in Philadelphia has received a lot of attention as a role-model program
for a collective impact approach to raising the city’s graduation rates. Its successes — a 6 percent
rise in the graduation rate between 2006 and 2011 — have been attributed to several main
features: cross-sector collaboration involving the school district, other city agencies, and nongovernmental
organizations; authentic youth participation; dedicated staffing; and common data
and metrics used to track progress across the collaboration. One component of Project U-Turn is
a Reengagement Center. 75
The Aspen Institute recently launched the Opportunity Youth Incentive Fund with support
from many other funders. The Fund is engaging in a multifaceted approach to serve disconnected
young people through the collective impact model, funding initiatives in 21 communities.
Participating communities are required to collect and report on a set of common indicators
that include system-level change indicators (for example, instances of policy changes) and
youth-level outcomes in the areas of education and employment. Equal Measure will be conducting
an initiative-wide evaluation that will examine the Fund’s collective impact approach. It
will explore how communities in the initiative developed their collaborations and acted collectively,
including what factors hindered systems change and what factors facilitated it. The evaluation
will also analyze the data from the common indicators to assess the initiative’s effect. 76
In connection with the Social Innovation Fund, 8 of the 21 communities will receive additional
funding to implement the Back on Track model, which includes enriched college preparation in
high school equivalency and high school completion programs and enhanced connections to
postsecondary education. The Social Innovation Fund initiative will also include a quasiexperimental
evaluation measuring postsecondary outcomes. This evaluation will be conducted
by the Urban Institute. It is now in the early design stage. 77
Performance Partnership Pilots are a recent effort to increase collaboration across institutions
that provide services to disconnected young people. These pilot projects allow up to 10
awardees increased flexibility to blend some of the funds they receive from multiple federal
programs (including funds from the U.S. Departments of Education, Labor, and Health and
Human Services) in order to improve outcomes for disconnected young people. The idea is that
by blending funds, they can remove some of the barriers to effective partnerships across com-
73 Cook et al. (2014).
74 Interview with Andrew Moore, Senior Fellow, National League of Cities, 3/17/2015.
75 Bridgespan Group (2012).
76 Interview with Justin Piff, Senior Director, Equal Measure, 9/21/2015.
77 Interview with Monique Miles, Deputy Director, Aspen Forum for Community Solutions, 3/20/2015.
28

munities. Applications were due in March 2015. The initiative includes a national evaluation
and awardees may also elect to conduct their own evaluations. 78
Another systems-change initiative targets adult education programs. The Accelerating
Opportunity initiative combines best practices in career pathway models into state-level initiatives
in five states. It has the potential to clarify the effect of career pathways approaches on student
college and career outcomes. A report on program impacts (from a study using a quasiexperimental
design) is due in 2016.
Other system-level efforts are focused on generating employer demand for disconnected
young people. Opportunity Nation has launched several initiatives targeting potential employers
of disconnected young people. One product of the effort is the Grads of Life public service
campaign, which seeks to change employers’ perceptions of these young people. The
Rockefeller Foundation is investigating demand-driven strategies to address the youth employment
issue and is seeking to develop and pilot test its own intervention. Since the evidence base
for demand-driven strategies is so small, evaluations of these efforts may provide important information
on what works in this emerging field.
IV.
Opportunities for Expanding Services and
Learning What Works
The evidence cited above demonstrates that the services available to disconnected young people
target the segment of the population most ready to reconnect to education or employment —
and most of the related evidence about what works concerns services targeting this segment of
the population. Many of the traditional youth programs that have been studied serve the most
motivated segment of the population, as evidenced by the screening done by these programs.
While this screening is used to assess readiness for the program, it is also one way to allocate
limited slots to those young people whom staff members believe will benefit the most. Adult
education programs at community colleges, while showing promising results, for the most part
do not specifically target disconnected young people but rather serve a range of adult learners
seeking opportunities to advance their education.
Even when young people are motivated to reconnect with education or employment,
there are few programs that can serve them if they have very weak basic skills. For young people
who have not yet aged out of the public school system, remedial education may be most easily
obtained from the local school district, yet many districts face disincentives to reaching out
to and reengaging young people, for reasons mentioned at the beginning of this paper. Despite
78 Uvin and Stack (2015).
29

these disincentives, however, a number of school districts are playing a role in reengaging dropouts
through initiatives that include district-led programs at alternative schools and public charter
schools that are forming to specifically serve this population. Examples of public charter
schools that have designed programs to meet the needs of out-of-school young people include
the nationwide SIATech program, Maya Angelou Schools in Washington, DC, and Our Piece
of the Pie schools in Connecticut. While these schools report promising outcomes, no thirdparty
evaluations of them have been conducted and none are in progress. 79
Programs for young people who are not actively seeking opportunities to reconnect
with school or work are lacking; there are few programs like Roca or Larkin Street that pursue
“relentless engagement.” While some research supports the theory of change behind these interventions,
no evidence yet exists to demonstrate their effectiveness. The Reengagement Centers
that have been established in several cities are examples of efforts to reach persistently disconnected
young people, but the data on these efforts do not shed light on their effectiveness in engaging
those most difficult to serve.
Many disconnected young people face circumstances that are huge barriers to their regular
participation in programs, such as unmet housing, child care, and transportation needs. Programs
have difficulty helping young people to meet these needs, either directly or through referrals,
because of a lack of services in their communities. The challenge of transportation and how
it limits regular program participation comes up time and time again in interviews with program
staff members and participants.
Recently, many discussions of policymakers and practitioners regarding how best to
address the issues of disconnected young people have focused on the need for system-level
change and collective impact approaches. While there are now a number of initiatives under
way, evaluating the impact of these initiatives comes with steep challenges. For one thing, it is
challenging to obtain the necessary data: While all stakeholders may agree that system-level
approaches may help them overcome the fragmentation of services that now make it difficult to
meet the needs of disconnected young people effectively, the reality is that each involved stakeholder
has its own system for tracking data and outcomes of interest. A common approach to
tracking outcomes of interest is essential to evaluating success.
A rising number of evidence-based programs, including behavioral and mental health
interventions, target many of the risk factors that lead to disconnection from education and the
labor market. Some programs are incorporating these practices into their services to better address
the needs of participants, but doing so comes with a number of challenges. Usually evidence-based
programs have highly specific criteria defining their target populations, and more
79 Rock, Rath, Dawson, and Silva (2014).
30

needs to be understood about how well these programs might be applied to somewhat differently
defined populations.
As shown in the previous section, there are more than a dozen studies under way that
have the potential to significantly contribute to the evidence base concerning “what works.”
There are also a number of evaluations of programs for at-risk young people that have found
positive results but that were not included in this evidence scan because they targeted an inschool
population. One example is the One Summer Plus program in Chicago, which combined
a summer jobs program with mentoring and, for a subset of participants, a social-emotional
learning component. A random assignment study found that the program reduced violent crime
rates among the program group by 43 percent. 80 One option to expand the programs available
for disconnected young people could be to look for successful models in programs for in-school
young people.
Opportunities and Recommendations
As this evidence scan lays out, there is a solid foundation of knowledge about “what works” in
serving disconnected young people. There are also more than a dozen evaluations under way
that have the potential to contribute to the knowledge base in the next few years. Still, this scan
has identified several areas where there are significant gaps in knowledge or services. The recommendations
that follow are organized by the target population of the intervention.
All Disconnected Young People
Many of the statistics cited in this paper about the paths young people take to reconnecting
with education and the labor market use data collected before the Great Recession. Structural
changes to the labor market, which were accelerated by the Great Recession, have dramatically
affected youth employment rates. Updated research is needed to clarify how labor-market
changes have changed patterns of reconnection for young people, as the traditional path to employment
has shifted and more young people are instead pursuing education. In a similar vein,
little is known about persistently disconnected young people and what can successfully reconnect
them to school and work. A longitudinal study that gathers data about young people who
are currently disconnected from education and the labor market would provide knowledge in
these areas where it is currently limited.
Young People Who Are Persistently Disconnected
Evaluations of major youth programs have shown that most of these programs, while
they do serve a disadvantaged population, tend to target the most motivated young people. Few
80 Heller (2014).
31

programs specifically target the most disconnected segment of the population. However, outreach
and intensive case management approaches like those taken by Roca and Youth Villages
have shown promise in helping the most disadvantaged young people get back on track. These
programs exist in only a few communities currently, providing many opportunities to bring them
to other areas. Investing in research while expanding these programs to a larger scale would increase
the field’s knowledge regarding the effectiveness of these interventions. Additionally, as
many of the existing programs were born in a particular community, studying expansion would
shed light on how to incubate these approaches successfully in new communities.
Young People with Low Basic Skills
As discussed in this paper, many disconnected young people have low academic skills
and lack work experience, huge barriers to reconnection through school or work. Most programs
in this scan targeted young people with the academic skills needed to achieve at least a
secondary credential. Few programs exist for young people with the lowest skill levels, especially
if reconnecting to the local school system is not an option for them, and little is known
about how to improve outcomes for this group.
A lack of work experience presents a significant barrier to employment for these young
people, yet few programs aim to provide them with work experience. Efforts should focus on
how to create job opportunities for these young people. Investing in demand-side strategies —
for example, supporting summer jobs and internship programs that engage employers — could
provide valuable work experience to young people with limited skills and limited opportunities.
A growing number of alternative schools (including district schools, charter schools,
and schools run by community-based organizations) serve young people with weak basic skills.
While these programs are probably serving an increasing number of disconnected young people,
little is known about their effectiveness. A number of adult education programs, including
those using high school equivalency bridge approaches and career pathway approaches, have
shown promise in moving participants with low basic skills toward secondary credentials and
into postsecondary education. However, since these programs are not specifically designed for
young people, it is difficult to know how they compare with comprehensive youth programs in
achieving outcomes for young people. For example, youth development approaches — a hallmark
of comprehensive youth programs — are rarely a component of adult education programs.
More research is needed to understand how effective these programs are for young people.
Disconnected Young People with Stronger Skills
Disconnected young people are a not a static population. Young people with stronger
skills, which may include some work experience and a secondary credential (or close to it), can
experience periods of engagement and then disengagement. They may work in a series of low-
32

wage jobs with gaps in between, or start classes at a community college but then drop out, or a
combination of the two. A number of interventions may help this population advance along a
career path.
Evidence suggests that programs that take career pathways approaches and connect
training to identifiable opportunities in the local labor market are more likely to achieve strong
employment outcomes. As the success of Year Up shows, connecting with local employers to
understand their needs and interests can also greatly improve opportunities for young people to
obtain meaningful internships and employment. Youth programs should adopt strategies that
incorporate career pathway approaches and cultivate employers. Such strategies could include
engaging employers to shape services, so that young people leaving programs have the skills
that companies seek, or educating employers about supervision strategies to help improve performance
and retention.
Community college is another place where big impacts are possible. According to one
study, only 40 percent of community college students complete a degree within six years. 81
Young people who connect to community college need support to ensure that they stay engaged.
MDRC’s study of the Accelerated Study in Associate Programs at the City University of
New York found one promising model to improve graduation rates. 82 However, few interventions
or efforts target people who enrolled in community college but who later dropped out
without finishing their degrees. Most community colleges do not attempt to reconnect with students
who have dropped out. One opportunity to make a difference could be to work with
community colleges to design efforts similar to Reengagement Centers that would conduct active
outreach to college dropouts and offer one-on-one counseling to help address their barriers
to completing their education.
81 Shapiro et al. (2014).
82 Scrivener et al. (2015).
33

Appendix
Selected Evaluations of Programs
for Disconnected Young People

37
Program 2007-2011
Evaluation Type Target Group Program Model Summary of Findings Evaluation Dates
Employment-focused programs: completed evaluations
Year Up Impact 18- to 24-year-olds
with secondary
credentials
P/PV Sectoral Study of
Jewish Vocational
Service and Per Scholas
Impact Young people and
adults over age 18 with
secondary credentials
Employment-focused programs: evaluations in process
Year Up Impact 18- to 24-year-olds
with secondary
credentials
Young Adult Internship
Program
Impact 16- to 24-year-olds not
working and not in
school
Bridges to Pathways Impact Young men ages 16 to
20 who are leaving
juvenile detention
Comprehensive youth programs: completed evaluations
Job Corps Impact,
implementation Disadvantaged young
people ages 16 to 24
Technical skills training in
information technology or
investment operations for 6
months, followed by 6 months of
internship; stipend for both
components
Training tied to a specific sector
(health care, information
technology); other forms of
support including job placement,
child care and transportation
assistance, and postprogram
follow-up
Technical skills training in
information technology or
investment operations for 6
months, followed by 6 months of
internship; stipend for both
components
Work-readiness training, 10-week
paid internship, transition support
Transitional jobs program that
includes online educational
support, mentoring, and socialemotional/cognitive
behavioral
programs
Employment, education, and
training in a (mostly) residential
setting
Earnings impacts in Years
2 and 3, driven by higher
hourly wages for program
participants
Employment and earnings
impacts for young people
Earnings and employment
impacts in Years 3 to 4 of
the study period, impacts
faded after Year 4; results
stronger for older young
adults
2003-2006
Early impact
results expected in
2016
Impact results
expected in 2017
Impact results
expected in 2017
1994-2003

Findings expected
in 2016
Findings expected
in 2016
Interim impacts
and
implementation
study in 2017;
cost study, final
impacts in 2018
38
Program Evaluation Type Target Group Program Model Summary of Findings Evaluation Dates
Comprehensive youth programs: completed evaluations (continued)
ChalleNGe Impact,
2005-2008
implementation
High school dropouts,
ages 16 to 18, who are
drug free and not
heavily involved with
the justice system
Youth Corps Impact 18- to 25-year-old, outof-school
young
people, mostly dropouts
Project Rise Implementation 16- to 24-year-olds
without secondary
credentials
Comprehensive youth programs: evaluations in process
YouthBuild Impact,
implementation Disadvantaged young
people ages 16 to 24
Education, service to the
community, and other forms of
support in a quasi-military
residential setting; 12-month
postresidential mentoring program
Paid work experience in
community service projects,
education and training, support
services through case
management; typical participation
full time and intended to last from
6 to 12 months
Career-readiness and educational
programs combined with a
conditional internship
Education and job training,
combined with community
service and additional support;
stipend for most participants
Increases in high school
equivalency credentials;
earning and employment
impacts in Year 3
First evaluation: increases
in employment and
decreases in arrests,
particularly for black
males; second evaluation:
no impacts on
employment
Implementation findings
discuss challenges
implementing internship
and engagement
Implementation findings:
program largely
implemented with fidelity
1993-1996
2006-2009
2011- 2015
2010-2018; early
impact findings
expected in 2017
Los Angeles
Reconnections Career
Academy
Linking Innovation and
Knowledge (@LIKE)
Impact,
implementation,
and costeffectiveness
Impact (quasiexperimental)
and
cost study
PACE Center for Girls Impact,
implementation,
and costeffectiveness
High school dropouts
ages 16 to 24
18- to 24-year-olds who
have been out of work
and school for more
than 90 days
Girls ages 12 to 17 who
have dropped out or
who are at risk of
dropping out
Connection to secondary
education and subsidized
vocational training in health care
Connection to secondary
education and vocational training,
life coaches, and transition
support
Academic services to support
attainment of secondary
credentials, life- and career-skills
education, counseling, and
connection to support services

Results expected
in 2018
Results expected
in 2017
2013-2015
39
Program Evaluation Type Target Group Program Model Summary of Findings Evaluation Dates
Postsecondary pathways: completed evaluations
GED Bridge to Health
2010-2013
and Business
I-BEST Impact (quasiexperimental)
Impact Adult learners seeking
their General
Educational
Development
credentials (GEDs)
Adult learners who
have basic skills needs
or who are English as a
Second Language
learners
Gateway to College Implementation 16- to 20-year-olds who
have dropped out or
who are close to
dropping out
GED instruction on a college
campus, curriculum geared to
health or business track, career
and college counseling, transition
support, cohort enrollment
Basic skills instruction and career
and technical education delivered
through co-teaching (basic skills
and content teachers teach the
classes together); supportive
services including transition
support
Students simultaneously earn high
school and college credits while
taking classes at a community
college; additional support
services
Higher attendance and
persistence in a GED
program, higher rates of
GED completion, higher
rates of college entry
Higher learning gains,
higher enrollment in
college-credit-bearing
courses, greater
persistence in college,
more earned credits
toward a credential, and
more earned occupational
credits
Implementation study
offers lessons in
replication and the
engagement of young
people
2006-2009
2010-2015
Postsecondary pathways: evaluations in process
GED Bridge -
Wisconsin
Impact Adult learners seeking
their GEDs
I-BEST Impact Adult learners who
have basic skills needs
or who are English as a
Second Language
learners
Basic skills programs: completed evaluations
Young Adult Literacy
Program
Implementation 16- to 24-year-olds
with 4th- through 8thgrade
reading levels
GED instruction on a college
campus, curriculum geared to a
career track, career and college
counseling, transition support
Basic skills instruction and career
and technical education delivered
through concurrent enrollment;
supportive services including
transition support
Literacy and numeracy
instruction, social support
services, life-skills and workreadiness
training, a paid
internship
Increases in literacy and
numeracy levels

2009-2012
Varies
Program 2012-2014
Evaluation Type Target Group Program Model Summary of Findings Evaluation Dates
Outreach and case management models: completed evaluations
Safe and Successful Youth Initiative
Impact (quasiexperimental)
risk of gun
14- to 24-year-olds at
violence
Outreach and case management models: evaluations in process
Youth Villages Impact,
implementation, cost
Young people ages 18
to 24 aging out of foster
care or exiting the
juvenile justice system
Street outreach to connect young
people to customized support
services
Clinically focused case
management, including
counseling and connection to
other services
Reduced risk of
incarceration, reduction in
number of violent crimes
in target communities
Impacts on employment
and earnings, housing
stability, mental health
issues and involvement in
violent relationships
2010-2016; final
impacts and cost
study expected in
2016
40
Roca Impact Young men ages 17 to
24 in adult probation or
exiting the juvenile
justice system
Latin American Youth
Center
Impact Young people ages 14
to 24
“Relentless” outreach to at-risk
young people, youth workers who
employ motivational interviewing
and cognitive behavioral
programs to build
transformational relationships,
additional programs that include
academic, vocational, and lifeskills
education
Unknown
Long-term case management Results expected
Behavioral interventions: completed evaluations
Becoming a Man Impact In-school, at-risk boys
in the 7th to 10th
grades
Social and cognitive skills
development
Increased school
engagement, reduced
violent crime arrests
Multisystemic Therapy Impact (multiple
studies)
Young people ages 12
to 17
Systems approach combining
cognitive behavioral therapy,
behavior management training,
and family therapy
Reduced recidivism,
reduction in out-of-home
placements, decreased
substance use, reduction
in mental health problems

unknown
Unknown
Report expected
in 2016
41
Program 2012-2015
Evaluation Type Target Group Program Model Summary of Findings Evaluation Dates
Behavioral interventions: completed evaluations (continued)
Adolescent Behavioral Learning Experience
Impact (quasiexperimental)
Collective impact approaches: completed evaluations
Youth Opportunity
Initiative
Impact (quasiexperimental),
implementation
Young people 16 to 18
years old detained in
jail at Riker’s Island
Young people in 36
communities
Cognitive behavioral program
focused on personal
responsibility, training, and
counseling
Coordinated efforts across
systems touching young people,
formation of community centers
Reengagement Centers Outcome analysis 15 communities Outreach to disconnected young
people, connections back to
school via multiple pathways,
connection to other supportive
services
Collective impact approaches: evaluations in process
Opportunity Youth
Incentive Fund
Implementation,
impact (quasiexperimental)
Disconnected young
people in 21
communities
Collective impact model; 8 of the
communities will implement the
Back on Track model
Better employment
outcomes than non-YO
communities, better
educational outcomes in
some YO communities
70 percent of young
people remained in school
or achieved secondary
credentials
2000-2005
2013-2014
Equal Measure
report expected
2018; Urban
Institute report
Performance
Partnership Pilots
Accelerating
Opportunity
Unknown at this
time
Impact (quasiexperimental)
Disconnected young
people in 10
communities
Coordination across agencies;
greater flexibility to blend funds,
streamline performance measures
5 states State-level efforts to implement
career pathways approaches

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Moving High School Dropouts to College. New York: MDRC.
Schochet, Peter Z., John Burghardt, and Sheena McConnell. 2006. National Job Corps Study and
Longer-Term Follow-Up Study: Impact and Benefit-Cost Findings Using Survey and Summary
Earnings Records Data. Princeton, NJ: Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.
Scrivener, Susan, Michael J Weiss, Alyssa Ratledge, Timothy Rudd, Colleen Sommo, and Hannah
Fresques. 2015. Doubling Graduation Rates: Three-Year Effects of CUNY’s Accelerated Study
in Associate Programs (ASAP) for Developmental Education Students. New York: MDRC.
Shapiro, Doug, Afet Dundar, Xin Yuan, Autumn T. Harrell, and Phoebe Khasiala Wakhungu. 2014.
Completing College: A National View of Student Attainment Rates — Fall 2008 Cohort.
Herndon, VA: National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.
46

Sparks, Sarah D. 2015. “Many Dropouts Try — and Fail — to Return to School: Many Dropouts
Try at Least Once to Return.” Website: www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/06/06/
34sticky.h32.html.
Strumpf Associates: Center for Strategic Change and the Center for Youth and Communities,
Brandeis University. 2015. Comments on the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act
(WIOA) Notices of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRMs). Available online at:
http://cyc.brandeis.edu/pdfs/BrandeisandStrumpfNPRMcommentsfn_6.15.pdf.
Strumpf, Lori. 2015. “Got Jobs? Some Positive News on Helping Young Adults Get Good Jobs —
Part II.” Website: www.aypf.org/college-and-career-readiness/got-jobs-some-positive-newson-helping-young-adults-get-good-jobs-part-i-2.
Triple P. 2015. “Triple P in a Nutshell.” Website: www.triplep.net/glo-en/find-out-about-triplep/triple-p-in-a-nutshell.
Turner, Cory, and Anya Kamenetz. 2015. “A ‘Sizable Decrease’ in Those Passing the GED.”
Website: www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/01/09/375440666/a-sizable-decrease-in-thosepassing-the-ged.
U.S. Census Bureau. 2012. “2011 American Community Survey Public Use Microdata.” Website:
http://factfinder2.census.gov.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 2015. “Home Visiting Evidence of Effectiveness.”
Website: http://homvee.acf.hhs.gov.
Uvin, John, and Kathy Stack. 2015. “Performance Partnership Pilots: An Opportunity to Improve
Outcomes for Disconnected Youth.” Website: http://blog.ed.gov/2014/03/performancepartnership-pilots-an-opportunity-to-improve-outcomes-for-disconnected-youth.
Vera Institute of Justice. 2015. “Impact Evaluation of the Adolescent Behavioral Learning
Experience (ABLE) Program at Rikers Island: Summary of Findings.” New York: Vera
Institute of Justice.
WestEd and California State Board of Education. 2015. “Local Control Funding Formula.” Website:
http://lcff.wested.org.
Wiegand, Andrew, Michelle Manno, Sengsouvanh (Sukey) Leshnick, Louisa Treskon, Christian
Geckeler, Heather Lewis-Charp, Castle Sinicrope, Mika Clark, and Brandon Nicholson. 2015.
Adapting to Local Context: Findings from the YouthBuild Evaluation Implementation Study.
New York: MDRC.
Willard, Jacklyn, Brian Bayes, and John Martinez. 2015. Gateway to College: Lessons from
Implementing a Rigorous Academic Program for At-Risk Young People. New York: MDRC.
WIF. Los Angeles Reconnections Career Academy (LARCA). Los Angeles, CA: City of Los Angeles
Workforce Investment Board with the County of Los Angeles Workforce Investment Board.
Available online at: http://innovation.workforce3one.org/resources_uploads/onepagers/OnePager_-_Los_Angeles__20130312_final.pdf.
47

About the Youth Transition Funders Group
The Youth Transition Funders Group (YTFG) is a national network of funders that work together
to support the well-being and economic success of vulnerable young people ages 14 to 25. YTFG
members seek to ensure that all young people have lifelong family, personal, and community connections
and the opportunities and tools to succeed throughout adulthood. YTFG provides a vibrant
and active community for national, regional, and community funders to learn from each other
and other experts in the field, stay abreast of new research and key policy developments, inform
and influence policy and practice, and foster collaborative approaches to grantmaking. YTFG
supports peer networking and sharing, creates key partnership with leaders in the field, and provides
strategic opportunities to leverage and extend the efforts of individual members.
Our network provides a unique space for diverse funders to come together to explore crosscutting
issues affecting all vulnerable youth. Our members’ interests and expertise span a
wide range of content areas, including education, workforce development, child welfare,
youth justice, housing, health, and mental health. We seek to expand beyond narrow and often
siloed dialogue to build a collective understanding of how a multi-systems approach can produce
improved youth outcomes. YTFG works to highlight critical overlaps and intersections
of youth-serving systems and identify creative approaches to design cross-system strategies
and solutions.
In addition to our cross-systems efforts, YTFG operates three dedicated workgroups for members
desiring to connect with colleagues to address the unique needs of particularly vulnerable
youth populations: those disconnected from work or school and those currently experiencing the
child welfare or youth justice systems.
Learn more about the Youth Transition Funders Group online at www.ytfg.org.

About MDRC
MDRC is a nonprofit, nonpartisan social and education policy research organization dedicated
to learning what works to improve the well-being of low-income people. Through its research
and the active communication of its findings, MDRC seeks to enhance the effectiveness of social
and education policies and programs.
Founded in 1974 and located in New York City and Oakland, California, MDRC is best known
for mounting rigorous, large-scale, real-world tests of new and existing policies and programs.
Its projects are a mix of demonstrations (field tests of promising new program approaches) and
evaluations of ongoing government and community initiatives. MDRC’s staff bring an unusual
combination of research and organizational experience to their work, providing expertise on the
latest in qualitative and quantitative methods and on program design, development, implementation,
and management. MDRC seeks to learn not just whether a program is effective but also
how and why the program’s effects occur. In addition, it tries to place each project’s findings in
the broader context of related research — in order to build knowledge about what works across
the social and education policy fields. MDRC’s findings, lessons, and best practices are proactively
shared with a broad audience in the policy and practitioner community as well as with the
general public and the media.
Over the years, MDRC has brought its unique approach to an ever-growing range of policy areas
and target populations. Once known primarily for evaluations of state welfare-to-work programs,
today MDRC is also studying public school reforms, employment programs for exoffenders
and people with disabilities, and programs to help low-income students succeed in
college. MDRC’s projects are organized into five areas:
• Promoting Family Well-Being and Children’s Development
• Improving Public Education
• Raising Academic Achievement and Persistence in College
• Supporting Low-Wage Workers and Communities
• Overcoming Barriers to Employment
Working in almost every state, all of the nation’s largest cities, and Canada and the United
Kingdom, MDRC conducts its projects in partnership with national, state, and local governments,
public school systems, community organizations, and numerous private philanthropies.

Page 48 of 72

Attachment B
Disconnected Youth:
A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds
Who are Not Working or In School
Page 49 of 72

Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year
Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
Adrienne L. Fernandes-Alcantara
Specialist in Social Policy
October 1, 2015
Congressional Research Service
7-5700
www.crs.gov
R40535

Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
Summary
In recent years, policymakers and youth advocates have focused greater attention on young
people who are neither working nor in school. Generally characterized as “disconnected,” these
youth may also lack strong social networks that provide assistance in the form of employment
connections and other supports such as housing and financial assistance. Without attachment to
work or school, disconnected youth may be vulnerable to experiencing negative outcomes as they
transition to adulthood. The purpose of the report is to provide context for Congress about the
characteristics of disconnected youth, and the circumstances in which they live. These data may
be useful as Congress considers policies to retain students in high school and to provide
opportunities for youth to obtain job training and employment.
Since the late 1990s, social science research has introduced different definitions of the term
“disconnected.” Across multiple studies of disconnected youth, the ages of the youth and the
length of time they are out of school or work for purposes of being considered disconnected
differ. In addition, a smaller number of studies have also incorporated incarcerated youth into
estimates of the population. Due to these methodological differences, the number of youth who
are considered disconnected varies. According to the research, the factors that are associated with
disconnection are not entirely clear, though some studies have shown that parental education and
receipt of public assistance are influential.
This Congressional Research Service (CRS) analysis expands the existing research on
disconnected youth. The analysis uses Current Population Survey (CPS) data to construct a
definition of “disconnected.” This definition includes noninstitutionalized youth ages 16 through
24 who were not working or in school at the time of the survey (February through April) and did
not work or attend school any time during the previous year. The definition is narrower than those
used by other studies because it captures youth who are unemployed and not in school for a
longer period of time. This is intended to exclude youth who may, in fact, be connected for part or
most of a year. Youth who are both married to a connected spouse and are parenting are also
excluded from the definition. For these reasons, the number and share of youth in the analysis
who are considered disconnected are smaller than in some other studies. Still, 2.4 million youth
ages 16 through 24—or 6.1% of this population—met the definition of disconnected in 2014,
meaning that they were not in school or working for all of 2013 and at some point between
February and April of 2014. Between 1988 and 2014, the rate of disconnection fluctuated
between 3.9% (1999 and 2000) and 7.5% (2010). As expected, rates of disconnection have varied
over time depending on economic cycles.
Like the existing research, the CRS analysis finds that a greater share of minority youth,
particularly black males, are disconnected, and that their rates of disconnection have been higher
over time. The analysis evaluates some other characteristics that have not been widely studied in
the existing research. For instance, compared to their peers in the general population,
disconnected youth tend to have fewer years of education, and are more likely to live apart from
their parents and (if they married to a disconnected spouse or are not married) to have children.
Disconnected youth are also twice as likely to be poor than their connected peers. The analysis
further finds that the parents of disconnected youth are more likely than their counterparts to be
unemployed and to have lower educational attainment.
Given the state of the current economy, rates of disconnection may remain stable or decrease.
Policymakers may consider interventions to reconnect youth to work and/or school. Interventions
can target children and youth at a particular stage of their early lives. Interventions can also focus
on particular institutions or systems, such as the family, community, and schools.
Congressional Research Service

Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
Contents
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1
Background ..................................................................................................................................... 3
Overview of Research on Disconnected Youth ............................................................................... 5
Methodology and Number of Disconnected Youth ................................................................... 5
Other Characteristics ................................................................................................................. 7
Reasons Associated with Disconnection ................................................................................... 7
CRS Analysis of Disconnected Youth ............................................................................................. 8
Overview ................................................................................................................................... 8
Limitations .......................................................................................................................... 9
Summary of Findings ...................................................................................................................... 9
Poverty, Family Living Arrangements, and Parental Characteristics ...................................... 10
Detailed Findings .......................................................................................................................... 12
Reasons Reported For Youth Not Being in School or Working ........................................ 12
Characteristics of Disconnected Youth ............................................................................. 14
Characteristics of Parents Living with Disconnected Youth ............................................. 26
Trends Over Time ............................................................................................................. 28
Implications for Policy ............................................................................................................ 34
Figures
Figure 1. Disconnected Youth Ages 16-24, by Disability Status, Presence of Children, and
Family Caretaking Responsibility, 2014 .................................................................................... 13
Figure 2. Disconnected Rates Among Youth Ages 16-24, by Age Group, Sex, and
Parental Status, 2014 .................................................................................................................. 18
Figure 3. Disconnected Rates Among Youth Ages 16-24, by Race, Ethnicity, Sex, and
Parental Status, 2014 .................................................................................................................. 19
Figure 4. Educational Attainment of Connected and Disconnected Youth Ages 19-24, by
Age Group, 2014 ........................................................................................................................ 20
Figure 5. Poverty Status of Disconnected and Connected Youth Ages 16-24, by Age
Group 2014 ................................................................................................................................. 22
Figure 6. Poverty Status of Disconnected and Connected Youth Ages 19-24, by Level of
Educational Attainment, 2014 .................................................................................................... 23
Figure 7. Living Arrangements of Disconnected and Connected Youth Ages 16-24, by
Age Group, 2014 ........................................................................................................................ 25
Figure 8. Poverty Status of Disconnected and Connected Youth Ages 16 to 24, by Living
Arrangement, 2014 ..................................................................................................................... 26
Figure 9. Educational Attainment of Disconnected and Connected Youths’ Parents, for
Youth Ages 16-24 Living with One or Both Parents, 2014 ........................................................ 27
Figure 10. Employment Status of Disconnected and Connected Youths’ Parents, for Youth
Ages 16-24 Living with One or Both Parents, 2014 .................................................................. 28
Figure 11. Rates of Disconnected Youth Ages16-24, by Sex, 1988-2014 .................................... 30
Figure 12. Rates of Disconnected Males Ages 16-24, by Age Group, 1988-2014 ........................ 31
Figure 13. Rates of Disconnected Females Ages 16-24, by Age Group, 2014 .............................. 32
Congressional Research Service

Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
Figure 14. Rates of Disconnected Males Ages 16-24, by Race and Ethnicity, 1998-2014 ........... 33
Figure 15. Rates of Disconnected Females Ages 16-24, by Race and Ethnicity, 1998-
2014 ............................................................................................................................................ 34
Tables
Table 1. Summary Characteristics of Connected and Disconnected Youth Ages 16-24,
2014 ............................................................................................................................................ 14
Contacts
Author Contact Information .......................................................................................................... 37
Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................... 37
Congressional Research Service

Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
Introduction
A young person’s detachment from both the labor market and school is an indicator that he or she
may not be adequately making the transition to adulthood. Referred to as “disconnected” in the
social science literature, youth who are neither working nor in school may have difficulty gaining
the skills and knowledge needed to attain self-sufficiency. Without adequate employment, these
youth may also lack access to health insurance and disability benefits, and forego the opportunity
to build a work history that will contribute to future higher wages and employability.
Disconnected youth may also lack strong social networks that provide assistance in the form of
employment connections and other supports such as housing and financial assistance. The federal
government may have a vested interest in connecting youth to school and work because of the
potential costs incurred in their adulthood in the form of higher transfer payments and social
support expenses, as well as lost tax revenue. 1
The purpose of the report is to provide context for Congress about the characteristics of youth
who are neither working nor in school, and the circumstances in which they live. A demographic
profile of disconnected youth may be useful for discussions of efforts to improve the outcomes of
at-risk high school students, such as through programs authorized by the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 and Higher Education Act (HEA) of 1965. 2
Research since the late 1990s has sought to identify and characterize disconnected youth. Based
on varying definitions of the term “disconnected” and the methodology used among multiple
studies, estimates of the disconnected youth population range. The Congressional Research
Service (CRS) conducted an analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Annual Social and Economic
Supplement (ASEC) to the Current Population Survey (CPS) to more fully understand the
characteristics of disconnected youth, and to provide recent data on the population. Based on
select questions in the CPS, the analysis constructs a definition of disconnection that includes
noninstitutionalized youth ages 16 through 24 who were not working or in school at the time of
the survey (February through April 2014) and did not work or attend school any time during the
previous year (2013). 3 The CPS surveys individuals in households, and not those in institutional
settings, such as college dorms, military quarters, and mental health institutions. (The number and
share of disconnected individuals would likely increase significantly if the CRS analysis
incorporated data from surveys of prisons and jails. 4 On the other hand, figures of disconnected
youth would likely be offset to some degree if youth in colleges and the military were counted.)
1 A study from 2012 examined the taxpayer and societal costs of lost earnings, lower economic growth, lower tax
revenues, and higher government spending associated with youth who are not working or in school (or are otherwise
not fully connected to either work or school). Collectively, these youth are described as “opportunity youth.” The study
attributed the immediate taxpayer costs for an “opportunity youth” at $13,900 and societal costs at $37,450; and the
future lifetime costs for opportunity youth at age 25 and older at $170,740 in taxpayer costs and $529,030 in societal
costs. These estimates are in 2011 dollars. Clive R. Belfield, Henry M. Levin, and Rachel Rosen, The Economic Value
of Opportunity Youth, Queens College, City University of New York and Teachers College, Columbia University in
association with Civic Enterprises, January 2012, http://www.serve.gov/sites/default/files/ctools/
econ_value_opportunity_youth.pdf. (Hereinafter Clive R. Belfield, Henry M. Levin, and Rachel Rosen, The Economic
Value of Opportunity Youth.)
2 For additional information about ESEA, see CRS Report RL33960, The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, as
Amended by the No Child Left Behind Act: A Primer. For additional information about HEA, see CRS Report
RL34654, The Higher Education Opportunity Act: Reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.
3 The CPS/ASEC is administered in February through April, though the majority of respondents are surveyed in March.
4 In 2010, the most recent year for which data are available, 79,165 youth (including those over age 18) were placed in
residential juvenile justice facilities. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and
(continued...)
Congressional Research Service 1

Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
The CRS definition is narrower than those used by other studies because it captures youth who
are unemployed and not in school for a longer period of time. The definition is intended to
exclude youth who may, in fact, be connected for part or most of a year, and may be between jobs
or taking an extended break after school. Youth who are married to a connected spouse and are
parenting 5 are also excluded from the definition, because they are working in the home and can
presumably rely on the income of their spouses. For these reasons, the number and share of youth
in the analysis who are considered disconnected are smaller than in some other studies. Still, 2.4
million youth ages 16 through 24—or 6.1% of this population—met the definition of
disconnected in 2014 (disconnected for all of 2013 and between February and April of 2014).
Like many other studies, the CRS analysis finds that a greater share of female and minority youth
tend to be disconnected, although in some recent years rates of disconnection among females and
males have been similar or converged. The CRS analysis also evaluates other characteristics that
have not been widely studied in the existing research. For instance, compared to their peers in the
general population, disconnected youth tend to have fewer years of education, and are more likely
to live apart from their parents (except for youth ages 22-24) and be poor. Further, the CRS
analysis expands upon the existing research by exploring the characteristics of the parents of
disconnected and connected youth who reside with their parents. The analysis finds that the
parents of disconnected youth are more likely than their counterparts to be unemployed and to
have a lower level of educational attainment. Finally, the analysis also examines trends in
disconnectedness over time, from 1988 through 2014.
Rates of disconnection have ranged from about 3.9% (in 1999 and 2000) to just
over 7.5% (in 2010).
Trends in disconnection rates for males and females for the most part run parallel
to each other, with disconnection rates for females being consistently higher than
those for males over the period, except in 2010, when these rates converged.
Disconnected rates were also highest over the period for black (non-Hispanic)
males in the study. In most years, rates of disconnection were highest among 19
to 21 year olds or 22 to 24 year olds.
The first section of this report discusses Congress’ growing interest in issues around youth who
are not working or in school. The second section presents a brief overview of research on the
population, including the number of disconnected youth, characteristics of the population, as well
as the factors that have been associated with disconnection. The purpose of this section is to show
the variation in the research on the population and to suggest that the definition of “disconnected”
is fluid. (The report does not evaluate the methodology or validity of these studies, or discuss in
great detail the federal programs or policies that may be available to assist disconnected youth.) 6
The third section presents the CRS analysis of disconnected youth ages 16 through 24. The final
section discusses implications for future research and federal policy.
(...continued)
Delinquency Prevention, Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement, 2010, National Report Series. On one day in
2009, the most recent year for which data are available, 747,800 youth ages 18 through 24 were held in state or federal
prisons or local jails. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, Prison Inmates at Midyear 2009, Table 17.
5 On the other hand, youth who are married to a disconnected spouse and have children or are unmarried with children
are included in the definition.
6 For information about existing federal policies and programs targeting vulnerable youth, see CRS Report RL33975,
Vulnerable Youth: Background and Policies. For background on youth unemployment and educational attainment, and
factors contributing to youth joblessness, see CRS Report R42519, Youth and the Labor Force: Background and
Trends.
Congressional Research Service 2

Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
Background
Congress has taken interest in, and enacted, policies that can assist youth who are not working or
in school. Legislation was first introduced in the 110 th Congress that specifically mentioned
disconnected youth. 7 Since that time, notable legislation in this area has included the following:
Performance Partnership Pilots (P3): The FY2014 appropriations law (P.L. 113-
76) and FY2015 appropriations law (P.L. 113-235) 8 provided authority for the
Departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services (along with
the Corporation for National and Community Service and related agencies) to
carry out up to 10 Performance Partnership Pilot projects. Such projects must
include services to assist youth ages 14 to 24 (who are homeless, in foster care,
involved in the juvenile justice system, or are neither employed nor enrolled in an
educational institution) in achieving educational, employment, and other goals.
Federal agencies may use discretionary funding to carry out pilots that involve
federal education, training, employment, or related social services programs
targeted to disconnected youth, or are designed to prevent youth from becoming
disconnected.
The law enables the applicable federal agencies to enter into agreements with
states, regions, localities, or tribal communities that give them flexibility in using
discretionary funds across these programs. The pilots must identify the
populations to be served, outcomes to be achieved, and methodology for
measuring outcomes, among other items. Federal agencies that participate must
ensure that their participation does not result in restricting eligibility of any
individual for any of the services funded by the agency or will not otherwise
adversely affect vulnerable populations that receive such services under the pilot.
The law also specifies that federal agencies that use discretionary funds may seek
to waive certain program requirements necessary for achieving the outcomes of
the pilots, provided that the agencies provide written notice to Congress (and
with limitations on waivers related to non-discrimination, wage and labor
standards, and allocation of funds to states or other jurisdictions). 9
7 In addition to enacting legislation, Congress has taken other steps to learn about disconnected youth. The 110 th
Congress conducted a hearing on disconnected youth and considered legislation that was intended to assist this
population. The hearing was conducted by the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Income Security and Family
Support, U.S. Congress, House Ways and Means Committee, Income Security and Family Support Subcommittee,
“Hearing on Disconnected and Disadvantaged Youth,” June 19, 2007, available at http://waysandmeans.house.gov/
hearings.asp?formmode=detail&hearing=569. Also in the 110 th Congress, the House Education and Labor Committee
examined how the federal government can help to re-engage disconnected youth. At the request of the committee, the
Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report in February 2008 that reviewed the characteristics and
elements that make local programs funded with federal dollars successful in re-engaging youth, as well as the
challenges in operating such programs. U.S. Government Accountability Office, Disconnected Youth: Federal Action
Could Address Some of the Challenges Faced by Local Programs That Reconnect Youth Education and Employment,
GAO-08-313, February 2008.
8 House of Representatives, Congressional Record. “Explanatory Statement on Appropriations Regarding the House
Amendment to the Senate Amendment on H.R. 83,” Congressional Record, daily edition, vol. 160, part I (December
11, 2014), p. H9187. Section 4 of H.R. 83 provides that the Explanatory statement, when published in the
Congressional Record, is to have the same effect as a conference agreement.
9 In November 2014, the Department of Education invited eligible entities to apply for FY2014 P3 funding. U.S.
Department of Education, “Applications for New Awards; Performance Partnership Pilots,” 79 Federal Register
70033-70051, November 24, 2014. Eligible applicants can include partnerships that involve public and private (non-
(continued...)
Congressional Research Service 3

Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA, P.L. 113-128) was
enacted in July 2014, and superseded the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) in
July 2015 as the primary federal workforce law. WIOA enables the Secretary of
Labor, in coordination with the Secretary of Education, to conduct a study
examining the characteristics of eligible youth that result in such youth being
significantly disconnected from education and workforce participation; the ways
in which such youth could have greater opportunities for education attainment
and obtaining employment; and the resources available to assist such youth in
obtaining the skills, credentials, and work experience needed to become
economically self-sufficient.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (P.L. 111-5), the omnibus
law that provided federal funding for programs to encourage economic recovery,
included provisions that pertained to disconnected youth. 10 Of the $1.2 billion
appropriated for programs in the Workforce Investment Act, Congress extended
the age through which youth were eligible for year-round activities (from age 21
to age 24) so that job training programs would be available for “young adults
who have become disconnected from both education and the labor market.” In
addition, the law made businesses that employ youth defined as “disconnected”
eligible for the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC). 11
The College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2008 (P.L. 110-315), which
reauthorized multiple programs under the Higher Education Act, did not include
a definition of disconnected youth, but identified “disconnected students” as
those who are limited English proficient, from groups that are traditionally
underrepresented in postsecondary education, students with disabilities, students
who are homeless children and youths, and students who are in or aging out of
foster care. The law made these students and “other disconnected students” (also
not defined) eligible for programs authorized by HEA, including the TRIO
programs, which provide college preparation and other services for low-income
high school students who are the first in their families to attend college. 12
The next section provides an overview of the existing research of disconnected youth, and it is
followed by the CRS analysis. Research on disconnected youth can provide context for Congress
regarding the magnitude of the population and the challenges they face.
(...continued)
profit, business, industry, and labor organizations organizations), with a lead entity being a state, local, or tribal
government entity. Per the FY2014 authorizing law, each pilot may not extend beyond September 30, 2018. The
FY2015 authorizing law enables the P3 pilots to extend through September 30, 2019, and for agencies to use FY2015
funds for pilots that are funded with FY2014 appropriations.
10 U.S. Congress, House Committee on Rules, Conference Report to Accompany H.R. 1 - The American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act of 2009, 110 th Cong., 1 st sess., February 8, 2009, Joint Explanatory Statement Division A and
Division B.
11 According to the law, a disconnected youth, for purposes of WOTC, is an individual certified as being between the
ages 16 and 25 on the hiring date; not regularly attending any secondary, technical, or post-secondary school during the
six-month period preceding the hiring date; not regularly employed during the six-month period preceding the hiring
date; and not readily employable by reason of lacking a sufficient number of skills. Youth with low levels of formal
education “may satisfy the requirement that an individual is not readily employable by reason of lacking a sufficient
number of skills.”
12 For further information about the TRIO programs, see CRS Report R42724, The TRIO Programs: A Primer.
Congressional Research Service 4

Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
Overview of Research on Disconnected Youth
CRS surveyed the social science literature from 1999 through 2014 on disconnected youth, and
found 10 relevant studies. These studies were identified by searching social science periodicals,
consulting the GAO team involved in the disconnected youth study, and reviewing works’ cited
pages in a few of the studies. The ten studies were carried out by federal agencies or nongovernmental
organizations. Below is a brief overview of the studies’ methodologies, definitions
of the population, as well as findings. 13 This review does not evaluate the methodology or validity
of studies on disconnected youth.
Methodology and Number of Disconnected Youth
Across the studies, estimates of the number of disconnected youth vary because of their
methodology, the age range of youth, and the period of time examined. 14 Most of the studies were
cross-sectional, meaning that they considered youth to be disconnected at a particular point in
time—usually on a given day survey data were collected—or over a period of time, such as
anytime during a previous year or the entire previous year. Some, however, were longitudinal,
and tracked a youth’s connection to work and school over multiple years. The studies also used
varying data sets, including the Current Population Survey, Decennial Census, National
Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY, which includes a 1979 cohort and a 1997 cohort),
American Community Survey (ACS), and the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to
Adult Health (Add Health), among others. Most of the studies did not provide actual numbers of
disconnected youth, and instead reported percentages. Percentages ranged from 7% to 20% of the
youth population, depending on the ages of the youth and methodology. Among the few studies
that provided estimates of the actual number, they found that about 1.4 million to nearly 7 million
youth were disconnected. One oft-cited study found that on average, 5.2 million youth ages 16 to
24, or 16.4% of that age group, were not working or in school at a given point in time. 15
The studies counted youth as young as age 16 and as old as age 24, with ages in between (e.g., 16
to 19, 18 to 24). 16 Youth were considered disconnected for most of the studies if they met the
13 The studies are as follows: (1) Annie E. Casey Foundation, Kids Count, 2013; (2) Clive R. Belfield, Henry M. Levin,
and Rachel Rosen, The Economic Value of Opportunity Youth, Corporation for National and Community Service and
White House Council for Community Solutions, 2012; (3) U.S. Department of Education, National Center for
Education Statistics, Condition of Education, 2007; (4) Thomas MaCurdy, Bryan Keating, and Sriniketh Suryasesha
Nagavarapu; Profiling the Plight of Disconnected Youth in America Stanford University, for the William and Flora
Hewlett Foundation, March 2006; (5) Peter Edelman, Harry J. Holzer, and Paul Offner; Reconnecting Disadvantaged
Young Men (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2006); (6) Congressional Budget Office, What is Happening to Youth
Employment Rates?, 2004; (7) Susan Jekielek and Brett Brown, The Transition to Adulthood: Characteristics of Young
Adults Ages 18 to 24 in America, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Population Reference Bureau, and Child Trends, 2003;
(8) Andrew Sum et al., Left Behind in the Labor Market: Labor Market Problems of the Nation’s Out-of-School, Young
Adult Populations, Northeastern University, Center for Labor Market Studies, 2003; (9) Michael Wald and Tia
Martinez, Connected by 25: Improving the Life Chances of the Country’s Most Vulnerable 14-24 Year Olds, Stanford
University, for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, 2003; and (10) Brett V. Brown and Carol Emig,
““Prevalence, Patterns, and Outcomes,” in America’s Disconnected Youth, Toward a Preventative Strategy, ed.
Douglas J. Beharov (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 1999.
14 Some of the studies do not provide detailed information about the methodology used.
15 Andrew Sum et al., Left Behind in the Labor Market: Labor Market Problems of the Nation’s Out-of-School, Young
Adult Populations, Northeastern University, Center for Labor Market Studies, 2003. (Hereinafter, Andrew Sum et al.,
Left Behind in the Labor Market: Labor Market Problems of the Nation’s Out-of-School, Young Adult Populations.)
16 A few studies, such as The Condition of Education (2007), by the Department of Education, and What is Happening
to Youth Employment Rates? (2004), by the Congressional Budget Office, do not use the term “disconnected” but
(continued...)
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Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
definition at a particular point in time, though for one study, youth were considered disconnected
if they met the criteria in the first month they were surveyed and in at least eight of the eleven
following months. 17 Another used a definition of disconnected to include youth who were not
working or in school for at least the previous year before the youth were surveyed, in 1999. 18
Some of the studies’ definitions incorporated other characteristics, such as marital status and
educational attainment. For example, an analysis of NLSY97 data used a definition of
disconnected youth that counts only those youth who were not in school or working, and not
married. 19 Two other studies used a definition for 18 to 24 year olds who were not enrolled in
school, not working, and who had obtained, at most, a high school diploma. 20 Another study used
several datasets and derived varying estimates (based on length of disconnection) that accounted
for youth who also may be (at most) partially attached to school and/or the labor force. 21 Further,
nearly all of the studies used definitions that included only non-institutionalized youth. This
means that the studies did not count youth in prisons, juvenile justice facilities, mental health
facilities, college dorms, military facilities, and other institutions. However, two studies
incorporated incarcerated youth and/or youth in the armed forces. 22 Inclusion of youth living in
institutional settings could affect the number and share of youth considered as disconnected.
Adding youth who are in prison or juvenile justice facilities would increase the number of
disconnected youth, whereas adding youth who are living in school dorms or in the armed forces
would increase the number of connected youth.
As mentioned previously, the College Cost Reduction Act (P.L. 110-315) did not define
“disconnected youth” but identified certain vulnerable youth—such as runaway and homeless
youth and English language learners—as being “disconnected students,” and therefore eligible for
certain educational support services. One of the studies classified disconnected youth in the same
vein. The study defined groups of disadvantaged youth ages 14 to 17, including those involved
with the juvenile justice system and youth in foster care, as vulnerable to becoming disconnected
(or having long-term spells of unemployment) because of the negative outcomes these groups
tend to face as a whole. 23
(...continued)
evaluate the number and characteristics of youth who are not working or in school.
17 Thomas MaCurdy, Bryan Keating, and Sriniketh Suryasesha, Profiling the Plight of Disconnected Youth in America,
Stanford University, for the William and Hewlett Foundation, March 2006. (Hereinafter Thomas MaCurdy, Bryan
Keating, and Sriniketh Suryasesha, Profiling the Plight of Disconnected Youth in America.)
18 Peter Edelman, Harry J. Holzer, and Paul Offner, Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men (Washington, DC: Urban
Institute, 2006). (Hereinafter, Peter Edelman, Harry J. Holzer, and Paul Offner, Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young
Men.)
19 Thomas MaCurdy, Bryan Keating, and Sriniketh Suryasesha, Profiling the Plight of Disconnected Youth in America.
20 Annie E. Casey Foundation, Kids Count, 2013; and Susan Jekielek and Brett Brown, The Transition to Adulthood:
Characteristics of Young Adults Ages 18 to 24 in America, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Population Reference Bureau,
and Child Trends, November 2005.
21 Clive R. Belfield, Henry M. Levin, and Rachel Rosen, The Economic Value of Opportunity Youth, Corporation for
National and Community Service and White House Council for Community Solutions, 2012. (Hereinafter Clive R.
Belfield, Henry M. Levin, and Rachel Rosen, The Economic Value of Opportunity Youth.)
22 Peter Edelman, Harry J. Holzer, and Paul Offner, Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men; and Congressional
Budget Office, What is Happening to Youth Employment Rates?, November 2004 (hereinafter Congressional Budget
Office, What is Happening to Youth Employment Rates?.)
23 Michael Wald and Tia Martinez, Connected by 25: Improving the Life Chances of the Country’s Most Vulnerable
14-24 Year Olds, Stanford University, for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, November 2003.
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Other Characteristics
In all studies that examined sex, an equal or greater share of females were disconnected.
According to one analysis of CPS data, disconnected youth included individuals age 16 through
19, and not in school or working (at what appears to be a particular point in time). 24 The study
found that during select years from 1986 through 2006, approximately 7% to 10% of youth met
this definition annually. Females were slightly more likely to be disconnected than males in
2006—8.1% compared to 7.1%. Another analysis of CPS data calculated the number and share of
disconnected youth based on data collected from monthly CPS surveys for 2001. 25 The study
found that 18% of females and 11% of males were disconnected. About 44% of youth defined as
disconnected had dropped out of high school.
Of the studies that examined race and ethnicity, white and Asian youth were less likely to be
disconnected than their counterparts of other racial and ethnic groups. According to an analysis of
2011 CPS data, the rates of disconnection among youth ages 16 to 19 by racial category were as
follows: 5% of non-Hispanic Asian and Pacific Islanders; 7% of non-Hispanic whites; 12% of
Hispanics; and 13% of non-Hispanic blacks. 26 Further, in a 2012 study using NLSY97 data, black
and Hispanic youth were overrepresented among the disconnected (or “opportunity”) youth
population.” 27
Reasons Associated with Disconnection
The factors that contribute to disconnection are not entirely clear, though some research has
shown that parental education and receipt of public assistance, as well as race and ethnicity, play
a role. An analysis of NLSY97 data found that disconnection was associated with being black and
parental receipt of government aid from the time the parent was 18 (or their first child was
born). 28 A separate analysis of NLSY79 data found that long-term disconnected youth—who were
not working or in school for at least 26 weeks in three or more years, and not married—tended to
have certain personal and family background factors, including family poverty, family welfare
receipt, and low parent education. 29 For example, among young men who met the long-term
definition of disconnected, 35% were from poor families, compared to 10% of connected men;
26% were from families receiving welfare (versus 6% of connected men); 28% were from singleparent
families (versus 13%); and 45% had a parent who lacked a high school degree (versus
16%). (Corresponding data for females are not available.) The study also found that nearly 90%
of those who were disconnected at age 20 to 23 were first disconnected as teenagers. Finally,
another study found that teens from low-income families were more likely to be neither enrolled
in school nor employed than those from higher-income families, and that teens whose parents did
24 U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, The Condition of Education, 2007.
25 Andrew Sum et al., Left Behind in the Labor Market: Labor Market Problems of the Nation’s Out-of-School, Young
Adult Populations.
26 Annie E. Casey Foundation, Youth and Work: Restoring Teen and Young Adult Connections to Opportunity, March
1, 2012.
27 Clive R. Belfield, Henry M. Levin, and Rachel Rosen, The Economic Value of Opportunity Youth.
28 Thomas MaCurdy, Bryan Keating, and Sriniketh Suryasesha, Profiling the Plight of Disconnected Youth in America.
29 Brett V. Brown and Carol Emig, “Prevalence, Patterns, and Outcomes,” in America’s Disconnected Youth: Toward
a Preventative Strategy, ed. Douglas J. Besharov (Washington, DC: AEI Press, 1999). (Hereinafter, Brett V. Brown
and Carol Emig, “Prevalence, Patterns, and Outcomes”).
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not finish high school were twice as likely to be disengaged than those whose parents have at
least some education (actual figures were not provided). 30
CRS Analysis of Disconnected Youth
Overview
The CRS analysis expands upon the existing research of disconnected youth. As discussed further
below, the CRS definition of disconnected youth is more narrow than most definitions employed
by other studies because it captures those who are not working and not in school for a longer
period of time (versus at a point in time, or for instance, over a six-month period). This definition
is intended to exclude youth who may, in fact, be connected for part or most of a year, and may be
between jobs or taking an extended break after school. Unlike all of the other studies, youth who
are married to a connected spouse and are parenting are also excluded from the definition, based
on the assumption that these young people work in the home by caring for their children and rely
on financial and social support from their spouses. 31 For these reasons, the number and share of
youth in the analysis who are considered disconnected are smaller than in some other studies.
Still, as discussed below, 2.4 million youth ages 16 through 24—or 6.1% of this population—
meet the definition of disconnected. Further, in contrast to most other studies, the CRS analysis
examines the characteristics of the parents of disconnected youth. The analysis finds that they are
more likely than the parents of connected youth to be unemployed and have a lower level of
educational attainment.
The CRS analysis constructs a definition of disconnected youth based on questions asked in the
U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey about workforce participation, school
attendance, marital, and parental status. The definition includes young people ages 16 through 24
who did not work anytime during a previous year (2013) due primarily to a reason other than
school and who also were neither working nor in school at the time of the survey (February
through April of 2014). (Reasons given as to why youth were not working could include that they
were either out of the workforce because they were ill or disabled, taking care of home or family,
could not find work, or some other unspecified reason.) This means that youth would be
disconnected for a minimum of 12 months (all of 2013), and some or all of a possible additional
three months (February through April of 2014).
The analysis includes youth as young as 16 because at this age they may begin working and
starting to prepare for post-secondary education. The study also includes older youth, up to age
24, since they are in the process of transitioning to adulthood. Many young people in their mid-
20s attend school or begin to work, and some live with their parents or other relatives. According
to social science research, multiple factors—including delayed age of first marriage, the high cost
of living independently, and additional educational opportunities—have extended the period of
transition from adolescence to adulthood. 32
30 Congressional Budget Office, What is Happening to Youth Employment Rates?
31 On the other hand, youth who are married to a disconnected spouse and have children or are unmarried with children
are included in the definition.
32 For additional information about the transition to adulthood, see CRS Report RL33975, Vulnerable Youth:
Background and Policies.
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Limitations
One limitation of this analysis is that the CPS surveys individuals in households, and not those in
institutional settings, such as prisons, jails, college dorms, military quarters, and mental health
institutions. Based on incarceration data from other studies, the number and share of disconnected
individuals would likely increase significantly if the study incorporated data from surveys of
prisons and jails. Further, the CPS does not count persons who are homeless. While the precise
number of homeless youth ages 16 through 24 is unknown, a significant share of these youth may
meet the definition of disconnected. 33 On the other hand, the share of disconnected youth in the
population might be offset by including members of the armed forces and college students in
dorms who are ages 18 through 24, and are by definition, working or going to school.
Another limitation of the analysis is that it does not account for the strong possibility that while
some disconnected youth are not formally employed, they are likely finding ways to make ends
meet through informal markets and social networks. These networks can provide cash assistance,
temporary housing and employment, and child care, among other supports. Nonetheless, informal
networks are likely unstable, and may not necessarily lead to longer-term employment or
attachment to school. 34 As discussed in the section below, nearly half of all disconnected youth
live in poverty. Finally, the CRS definition of disconnected youth does not identify those youth
who are disconnected for periods that exceed 16 months. As a longitudinal study of disconnected
youth shows, youth who are disconnected for three years or more are more likely to face negative
outcomes than their counterparts who are disconnected for part of one to two years. 35
Summary of Findings
This section provides a summary of the CRS analysis, which is followed by detailed discussion of
each of the themes raised. The discussion is accompanied by relevant figures and table.
The CRS analysis shows that disconnected youth are more likely to be female, black or Hispanic,
and in their early- to mid-twenties. It also demonstrates that disconnected youth are a diverse
group. Disability appears to be at least part of the reason some youth are not working or in school
(Figure 1). About one-third (34%) of all youth reported they were not working because they were
disabled, of whom over two-fifths (44%) had a disability severe enough that they received
Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Medicare (federal programs that support this population).
About another 26% reported having childrearing and homemaking responsibilities that kept them
from work, while the remaining youth did not have disabilities or child and home-related
responsibilities. These home-related responsibilities could include caring for siblings or managing
a household because their parents have a disability or some other reason. Among females, those
who were parenting were well represented among the disconnected youth population, although
rates of disconnected female parents has declined over time.
33 The limited research on runaway and homeless youth has found that these youth face challenges remaining in school
and working. See Paul A. Toro, Amy Dworsky, and Patrick J. Fowler, Homeless Youth in the United States: Recent
Research Findings and Intervention Approaches, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the
Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, The National Symposium on Homeless Research, 2007.
34 For a discussion of social networks in low-income communities, see Katherine S. Newman, No Shame In My Game:
The Working Poor in the Inner City, (New York: Vintage Books and Russell Sage Foundation, 1999), pp. 72-84.
35 Brett V. Brown and Carol Emig, “Prevalence, Patterns, and Outcomes,” See also, Douglas J. Besharov and Karen N
Gardiner, “Introduction” in Douglas J. Besharov, ed. America’s Disconnected Youth: Toward a Preventative Strategy.
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Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
It is unclear to what extent having a disability, caring for a child, or having responsibilities in the
home actually keeps youth from engaging in school or work. Some may respond to CPS
questions in what they believe to be a socially appropriate manner, and they may recognize that
being idle is not widely acceptable. Still, over one-third of youth (or their parents) reported that
they (the youth) did not have any limitations that would keep them from work. These youth could
be considered the “hard core” of the disconnected. Yet even they may have “legitimate”
limitations that are keeping them idle, such as an undiagnosed disability. Future research is
needed to better understand the reasons youth are disconnected, and whether these reasons are
legitimately keeping youth from attending school or working.
Disconnected youth will likely face numerous challenges as they transition to adulthood. In terms
of education, these youth are foregoing an opportunity to attain a high school diploma or GED, or
additional years of schooling that can assist them in securing employment and gaining experience
that will contribute to future employability. About 3 out of 10 disconnected youth ages 19 through
24 lack a high school diploma or its equivalent (Figure 4). For these youth in particular, securing
stable, well-paying employment may be unlikely.
Being out of the labor force—especially for an extended period—can mean forfeiting current
wages and future higher wages that are commensurate with work experience. Somewhat less than
half of all disconnected youth were poor (Figure 5, and discussed in further detail below), and
even having additional education beyond high school did not mitigate their relatively high levels
of poverty when compared to their connected peers (Figure 6).
Additional research is needed to better understand how poor disconnected youth are making ends
meet. Surely some of them receive assistance through informal networks in the form of providing
child care, work in the informal economy, and temporary housing. And many are likely eligible
for federal cash and non-cash assistance programs, including public housing. Yet because the CPS
is limited to surveying individuals in households, the analysis in this report does not capture those
who are homeless or are in jails, prisons, or residential treatment facilities. If these groups were
surveyed, rates of disconnection would likely be higher. The CPS similarly does not include
youth who might offset rates of disconnection, such as those youth residing in college dorms and
on military bases. At least a few studies have attempted to factor in imprisoned and active
military populations, but additional work would be needed to incorporate other groups of youth.
The CRS analysis expands the current research by examining the characteristics of disconnected
youths’ parents. Because the CPS is a cross-sectional data set, CRS could not evaluate antecedent
conditions or events affecting youth or their parents that may contribute to later youth
disconnection. However, the analysis in this report hints that disconnection may be
intergenerational, meaning that the parents of youth who are currently disconnected could have
experienced periods in which they were not working or in school. In fact, a significant share of
parents of disconnected youth were not working at the time of the 2014 survey (Figure 10).
Among disconnected youth living in single-parent households, over 40% had parents who were
not employed. Additionally, disconnected youths’ co-residing parents were more likely to lack a
high school diploma or its equivalent compared to connected youths’ co-residing parents (Figure
9). The next section further examines the role of family characteristics and other related factors
that likely influence disconnectedness.
Poverty, Family Living Arrangements, and Parental Characteristics
Given CRS’s findings and the discussion that follows, the connections between poverty, family
background, living arrangements and youth disconnectedness are interrelated. In some cases,
disconnectedness may be a cause for high poverty rates among such youth, especially among
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Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
those who are living apart from family or other relatives. Among youth living apart from parents,
the poverty rate of disconnected youth (65.3%) was twice that of connected youth (29%) (Figure
8). In other cases, poverty may contribute to youth becoming disconnected. Here the connection
is more complex. CRS found that disconnected youth, even when living with both parents, were
almost three times more likely to be poor than connected youth, 15.7% compared to 5.8%, and
when living with only one parent, twice as likely to be poor than their connected counterparts,
46.6% compared to 22.8%. When living with a parent, disconnected youth were slightly more
likely to live with only one parent (33.7%) than with both parents (30.1%), whereas connected
youth were more likely to live with both parents (46.6%) than just one (22.8%) (Figure 7).
When parents’ characteristics are examined, disconnected youth were about twice as likely to
have parents who had not completed high school (Figure 9); for disconnected youth in singleparent
families, 25.6% had a parent who had not completed high school, compared to 13.7% of
connected youth; for disconnected youth living in families with both parents, 25.4% had either
one or both parents not having attained a high school diploma or its equivalent, compared to
16.9% of connected youth. Furthermore, disconnected youth were more likely to have a parent
who was not working at the time of the survey (Figure 10). Among disconnected youth living
with only one parent, the share with a nonworking parent (49.7%) was greater than that of
connected youth (25.6%); among disconnected youth living with both parents, the share with
neither parent working (16.1%) was almost three times that of connected youth (5.3%).
Research evidence indicates that living in poverty has negative effects on children’s life outcomes
that may range well into adulthood. By almost any indicator, poor children fare worse than their
non-poor counterparts. Poor children tend to score lower on standardized tests of IQ, verbal
ability, and achievement, and are less likely to advance in grade and complete high school. Poor
teen adolescent girls are more likely to become teenage mothers than their non-poor counterparts,
contributing to a cycle of poverty from one generation to the next. While income poverty is
associated with poor child outcomes, lack of income in itself may account for only part of the
reason why poor children face poor future prospects. Other factors, such as a safe and nurturing
home environment, and parental characteristics associated with their income, are arguably as
important, if not more so, than income, per se, in affecting children’s life chances. 36 The research
evidence indicates that poverty’s lasting effects are most dramatic for children who experience
persistent and/or deep poverty when they are younger. Among adolescents, the evidence of
poverty’s negative effects on outcomes is much less clear. For example, poverty among
adolescents is negatively related to high school graduation, college attendance, and years of
schooling. The U.S. Department of Education reports the high school dropout rate in 2009 for
students living in low-income families (7.4%) was more than double that of middle income
students (3.4%) and five times greater than their peers from high-income families (1.4%). 37 Other
researchers using NLSY79 data found that children who spent one to three years of their
adolescence in poverty were 60% less likely to graduate from high school than those who were
not poor, and those who spent four years of adolescence in poverty were 75% less likely.
Respectively, children who spent part or all of their adolescence in poverty were 40% and 60%
36 See, for example: Susan E. Mayer, What Money Can’t Buy: Family Income and Children’s Life Chances
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997) and Greg J. Duncan and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn (eds.),
Consequences of Growing Up Poor (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1997).
37 Chris Chapman et al., Trends in High School Dropout and Completion Rates in the United States: 1972-2009,
Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, October 2011, Table 1, p. 28.
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Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
less likely to attend college than other children, and on average attained between 1.0 and 1.75
fewer years of education. 38
While the evidence presented above suggests a strong relationship between adolescent poverty
and educational attainment, the NLSY researchers most importantly found that the relationship
withers when other control variables, such as parental education, family structure, and IQ are
taken into account. The researchers found that “after the control variables were taken into
account, the number of years spent below the poverty line during adolescence were not related to
any of the educational outcomes considered” (emphasis added). 39
Yet when viewed over a longer period of time than just adolescence, growing up in poverty does
appear to affect educational attainment, even after controlling for other background factors.
Researchers using 21 years of Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data found that all other
things being equal, the number of years that children spend in poverty while growing up is an
important factor in predicting whether they will graduate from high school. 40 These researchers
found that growing up with a single parent further reduces the probability of high school
completion.
Detailed Findings
This section begins with an overview of the reasons disconnected youth said they were not
working or in school at any time in 2014. Following this discussion is an overview of the basic
demographics of disconnected youth and their characteristics across several domains—
educational attainment, living arrangements, parenting status, and poverty status. These data,
drawn from the 2014 CPS, are compared to data for connected youth. The section ends with a
presentation of trend data on disconnection from 1988 through 2014, with a focus on sex, age,
and race and ethnicity.
Reasons Reported For Youth Not Being in School or Working
Figure 1 displays the reasons given for out-of-school youth not working in the first quarter of
2014. Major reasons include taking care of family or home, illness or disability, or they could not
find work. About one-quarter of disconnected youth (26.4%, 623,000) were reported to be taking
care of home or family and were not disabled. Of those, over half (319,000) were reported as
having a child. The CPS does not prompt respondents to elaborate on the type of care provided in
the home or to family, and therefore, it is unclear the extent to which this care would interfere
with their ability to work or attend school.
Illness or disability was reported as the major reason why about 34% (about 811,000) of
disconnected youth did not work in 2014, with most designated as having a severe disability. 41
38 See, Jay D. Teachman et al., “Poverty During Adolescence and Subsequent Educational Attainment,” in
Consequences of Growing Up Poor, ibid, pp. 382-418.
39 Jay D. Teachman et al., “Poverty During Adolescence and Subsequent Educational Attainment,” in Consequences of
Growing Up Poor., p. 413.
40 Robert Haveman and Barbara Wolfe, “Schooling and Fertility Outcomes: Reduced-Form and Structural Estimates,”
in Childhood Poverty and Adolescent Consequences of Growing Up Poor, op cit., p. 442.
41 The CPS asks several questions to determine whether individuals are considered to have a work disability. Persons
are identified as having a work disability if they: (1) reported having a health problem or disability which prevents
them from working or which limits the kind or amount of work they can do; or (2) ever retired or left a job for health
reasons; or (3) did not work in the survey week because of long-term physical or mental illness or disability which
prevents the performance of any kind of work; or (4) did not work at all in the previous year because they were ill or
(continued...)
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One indication that a person is severely disabled is their receipt of Supplemental Security Income
(SSI) or Medicare. 42 Over two-fifths of disconnected individuals with disabilities (359,000)
received one of these two benefits, accounting for about one in seven (15.2%) of all disconnected
youth.
An estimated 36.0% of disconnected youth (852,000) could not find work and did not have a
disability or responsibilities in the home of caring for a child or other family member.
Figure 1. Disconnected Youth Ages 16-24, by Disability Status, Presence of Children,
and Family Caretaking Responsibility, 2014
Source: Congressional Research Service based on analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau 2014 Current
Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC).
Notes: Disconnected youth are youth who were not working or in school at the time of the survey and were
reported as having not worked during the previous year for reasons other than going to school.
(...continued)
disabled; or (5) are under 65 years of age and covered by Medicare; or (6) are under age 65 years of age and a recipient
of Supplemental Security Income (SSI); or (7) received veteran’s disability compensation. Persons are considered to
have a severe work disability if they meet any of the criteria in 3 through 6, above. See http://www.census.gov/hhes/
www/disability/disabcps.html.
42 Individuals who receive Social Security disability are eligible to receive Medicare two years after entitlement to
SSDI, and in some cases earlier. Disabled children may receive Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits
indefinitely as long as the disability was incurred before reaching age 22. For information about SSDI, see CRS Report
RL32279, Primer on Disability Benefits: Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security
Income (SSI).
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Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
Characteristics of Disconnected Youth
Table 1 compares demographic characteristics of disconnected and connected peers ages 16
through 24 in 2014 (which meant that youth were disconnected in all of 2013 and at the time of
the survey in 2014). The table shows that 2.4 million of these youth, or 6.1% of the population,
met the definition of disconnected. Further, females were slightly more likely than their
counterparts to be disconnected. The likelihood of minority youth being disconnected ranged
from slightly to much more likely than white youth. The rate of disconnection among black (non-
Hispanic) youth was highest—at 10.8%. This is compared to 5.0% to 6.1% of their white and
Hispanic peers, and peers who identified with other racial categories. Among youth ages 16
through 18, 19 through 21, and 22 through 24, the younger youth were more likely than their
older peers to be connected. Finally, relative to connected youth, disconnected youth were more
likely to have lower education attainment, live apart from their parents, and be poor. These
findings are discussed in greater detail below.
Table 1. Summary Characteristics of Connected and Disconnected Youth
Ages 16-24, 2014
(Numbers in 1,000s)
Disconnected
Total
Number Number Percentage
Connected
Share
of
Total
Youth Number Percentage
AGE AND SEX
Age
Total 38,950 2,366 100.0% 6.1% 36,585 100.0%
Age 16 – 18 13,012 326 13.8% 2.5% 12,686 34.7%
Age 19 – 21 12,221 896 37.9% 7.3% 11,325 31.0%
Age 22 – 24 13,717 1,143 48.3% 8.3% 12,574 34.4%
Males
Total 19,719 1,150 100.0% 5.8% 18,569 100.0%
Age 16 – 18 6,543 190 16.5% 2.9% 6,353 34.2%
Age 19 – 21 6,231 449 39.1% 7.2% 5,782 31.1%
Age 22 – 24 6,945 510 44.4% 7.4% 6,435 34.7%
Females
Total 19,231 1,216 100.0% 6.3% 18,015 100.0%
Age 16 – 18 6,469 136 11.2% 2.1% 6,333 35.2%
Age 19 – 21 5,990 447 36.8% 7.5% 5,543 30.8%
Age 22 – 24 6,772 633 52.0% 9.3% 6,139 34.1%
RACE AND ETHNICITY BY SEX
Males and Females
Total 38,950 2,366 100.0% 6.1% 36,585 100.0%
White non-Hispanic 21,642 1,087 46.0% 5.0% 20,554 56.2%
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Disconnected
Total
Number Number Percentage
Connected
Share
of
Total
Youth Number Percentage
Black non-Hispanic 5,507 595 25.1% 10.8% 4,913 13.4%
Hispanic 8,309 506 21.4% 6.1% 7,803 21.3%
Other, non-Hispanic 3,492 178 7.5% 5.1% 3,315 9.1%
Males
Total 19,719 1,150 100.0% 5.8% 18,569 100.0%
White non-Hispanic 11,002 509 44.2% 4.6% 10,494 56.5%
Black non-Hispanic 2,683 350 30.5% 13.1% 2,333 12.6%
Hispanic 4,283 226 19.6% 5.3% 4,058 21.9%
Other, non-Hispanic 1,751 65 5.7% 3.7% 1,686 9.1%
Females
Total 19,231 1,216 100.0% 6.3% 18,015 100.0%
White non-Hispanic 10,639 579 47.6% 5.4% 10,061 55.8%
Black non-Hispanic 2,824 244 20.1% 8.6% 2,580 14.3%
Hispanic 4,025 280 23.1% 7.0% 3,745 20.8%
Other, non-Hispanic 1,742 113 9.3% 6.5% 1,629 9.0%
EDUCATION AMONG YOUTH OVER AGE 18
All Levels of Education
Total 25,938 2,040 100.0% 7.9% 23,899 100.0%
Age 19 – 21 12,221 896 100.0% 7.3% 11,325 100.0%
Age 22 – 24 13,717 1,143 100.0% 8.3% 12,574 100.0%
Lacks High School Diploma or GED
Total 2,489 526 25.8% 21.1% 1,964 8.2%
Age 19 – 21 1,455 245 27.3% 16.8% 1,210 10.7%
Age 22 – 24 1,035 281 24.5% 27.1% 754 6.0%
High School Diploma or GED Only
Total 7,857 1,121 55.0% 14.3% 6,735 28.2%
Age 19 – 21 3,841 503 56.1% 13.1% 3,338 29.5%
Age 22 – 24 4,015 618 54.1% 15.4% 3,397 27.0%
High School Diploma or GED and Additional Schooling
Total 15,593 393 19.2% 2.5% 15,200 63.6%
Age 19 – 21 6,925 148 16.5% 2.1% 6,777 59.8%
Age 22 – 24 8,667 244 21.4% 2.8% 8,423 67.0%
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Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
Disconnected
Total
Number Number Percentage
Connected
Share
of
Total
Youth Number Percentage
LIVING ARRANGEMENTS BY AGE
All Arrangements
Total 38,950 2,366 100.0% 6.1% 36,585 100.0%
16 – 18 13,012 326 100.0% 2.5% 12,686 100.0%
19 – 21 12,221 896 100.0% 7.3% 11,325 100.0%
22 – 24 13,717 1,143 100.0% 8.3% 12,574 100.0%
Lives with one or both parents
Total 26,880 1,510 63.8% 5.6% 25,370 69.3%
16 – 18 12,103 269 82.5% 2.2% 11,834 93.3%
19 – 21 8,732 647 72.1% 7.4% 8,085 71.4%
22 – 24 6,045 595 52.0% 9.8% 5,451 43.3%
Lives apart from parents
Total 12,070 855 36.2% 7.1% 11,215 30.7%
16 –18 909 57 17.5% 6.3% 852 6.7%
19 – 21 3,489 250 27.9% 7.2% 3,240 28.6%
22 – 24 7,672 548 48.0% 7.1% 7,124 56.7%
POVERTY STATUS
Total 38,950 2,366 100.0% 6.1% 36,585 100.0%
Poor 7,170 1,042 44.0% 14.5% 6,128 16.8%
Nonpoor
31,780 1,324 56.0% 4.2% 30,456 83.2%
Source: Congressional Research Service based on analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau 2014 Current
Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC).
Notes: Disconnected youth are youth who were not working or in school at the time of the survey and were
reported as having not worked during the previous year for reasons other than going to school.
Sex and Age
It might be expected that a higher percentage of males than females are disconnected, given that a
greater share of males ages 16 through 24 have dropped out of high school 43 and that males
appear to be more vulnerable to losing jobs. 44 However, consistent with other studies of
43 This is based on the status dropout rate, or the dropout rate regardless of when an individual dropped out. Separately,
the event dropout rate refers to the share of youth who dropped out within a given school year. The event dropout rate
for males and females is similar. U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, “Percentage
of high school dropouts among persons 16 through 24 years old (status dropout rate), by sex and race/ethnicity:
Selected years, 1960 through 2012,” May 2013.
44 The social science literature has discussed the challenges that males, particularly men of color in urban communities,
face in staying connected to work. See for example, Peter Edelman, Harry J. Holzer, and Paul Offner, Reconnecting
(continued...)
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disconnected youth, the CRS analysis shows that females are more likely than males to be
disconnected. The difference in the rates between males and females ages 16 through 24 is
relatively small—6.3% of females and 5.8% of males, as depicted in Figure 2.
The higher rates for females appears to be explained by the fact they were more likely to be
parenting. 45 Overall, 2.2% of females and 0.3% of males were disconnected and parenting. It is
possible that their parenting responsibilities kept them from working or attending school. (As
shown in Figure 1, an estimated 13.5% of youth reported they were not connected in 2014
because they were taking care of home or family, and had children.) If the share of females with
children is removed from each of the age categories, females are less likely to be disconnected as
their male counterparts without children (which is nearly all the males). For example, among 19
to 21 year olds, 5.5% of females were disconnected and without a child, compared to 7.1% of
males; among 22 to 24 year olds, 5.1% of females were disconnected and without children,
compared to 6.9% of males.
(...continued)
Disadvantaged Young Men (Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute Press, 2006) and William Julius Wilson, When Work
Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Vintage Books, 1996). See also, CRS Report R41431,
Child Well-Being and Noncustodial Fathers.
45 In this analysis, disconnected youth with children are unmarried or are married to a disconnected partner. Children
include biological children, adoptive children, or step-children who live in the same home as the disconnected
individual.
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Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
Figure 2. Disconnected Rates Among Youth Ages 16-24, by Age Group, Sex, and
Parental Status, 2014
Source: Congressional Research Service based on analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau 2014 Current
Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC).
Notes: Disconnected youth are youth who were not working or in school at the time of the survey and were
reported as having not worked during the previous year for reasons other than going to school. Details may not
sum to totals due to rounding.
Race and Ethnicity
Minority youth are generally more likely than their white peers to not be working or in school. 46
Figure 3 shows rates of disconnection by race and ethnicity, sex, and parental status for 2014.
Black males had a substantially higher rate of disconnection than their white non-Hispanic or
Hispanic male counterparts. The black male disconnection rate (13.1%) was nearly three times
that of their white non-Hispanic counterparts (4.6%), and more than twice that of Hispanic males
(5.3%). Similarly, black females also had a higher rate of disconnection than their white and
Hispanic counterparts (8.6% compared to 5.4% and 7.0%).
Being a parent is associated with disconnectedness among females, relative to males. Overall 2%
of disconnected females and 0.3% of disconnected males were parenting in 2014. A greater share
of disconnected black females and Hispanic females (3.6% and 3.2%, respectively) were parents,
compared to 1.6% of white females. Females in general would have a lower rate of disconnection
(4.1%) than males (5.6%) if parenting status did not play a role. By racial and ethnic group, this
46 Asian or Pacific Islander and Native Americans and Alaskan Natives are not included in this analysis; however, these
groups are included in the “other” category of Table 1.
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Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
holds true for white females (3.8% compared to 4.5% of white males) and Hispanic females
(3.8% compared to 4.9% of Hispanic males); however, even if parenting status is ignored, black
disconnected black males were more likely to be disconnected than black females (11.9% versus
5.0%).
Figure 3. Disconnected Rates Among Youth Ages 16-24, by Race, Ethnicity, Sex, and
Parental Status, 2014
Source: Congressional Research Service based on analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau 2014 Current
Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC).
Notes: Disconnected youth are youth who were not working or in school at the time of the survey and were
reported as having not worked during the previous year for reasons other than going to school. Details may not
sum to totals due to rounding.
Educational Attainment
CRS evaluated the educational attainment of disconnected youth who were old enough to have
completed high school relative to their connected peers, based on questions in the CPS about
highest level of education completed. Youth ages 19 through 24 were grouped according to
whether they (1) lacked a high school diploma or general education development (GED)
certificate; (2) had a high school diploma or GED; or (3) graduated from high school and had
additional schooling beyond high school. Higher educational attainment is associated with higher
earnings, and earnings differences have grown over time among workers with different levels of
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Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
educational attainment. In 2013, higher earnings and lower unemployment rates were associated
with higher educational attainment among persons 25 and older. 47 For example, the median
weekly earnings for those with less than a high school diploma were $488 and their
unemployment rate was 9.0%. The corresponding figures for high school graduates was $668 and
6.0%, respectively. Among those with a bachelor’s degree, the corresponding figures were $1,101
and 3.5%, respectively. 48
As a group, disconnected youth appear to be at a disadvantage in competing for jobs that pay
higher wages because of their comparatively low levels of education. Figure 4 displays the share
of disconnected and connected youth by age (19-24, 19-21, and 22-24) within the three categories
of educational attainment. Disconnected youth tend to have fewer years of schooling than their
connected counterparts. In 2014, among 19 through 21year olds, over one-quarter (27.3%) of
disconnected youth lacked a diploma or GED, compared to about one out of ten (10.7%)
connected youth. Among older youth, this difference persisted, with 24.5% of disconnected youth
and 6.0% of connected youth lacking a diploma or GED.
Figure 4. Educational Attainment of Connected and Disconnected Youth Ages 19-24,
by Age Group, 2014
Source: Congressional Research Service based on analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau 2014 Current
Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC).
Notes: Disconnected youth are youth who were not working or in school at the time of the survey and were
reported as having not worked during the previous year for reasons other than going to school.
47 U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Earnings and unemployment rates by educational
attainment,” April 2, 2015, http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm.
48 Data are 2013 annual averages for persons age 25 and over. Earnings are for full-time wage and salary workers.
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Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
Poverty
Poverty may be both a cause and consequence of youth disconnectedness. Growing up poor may
contribute to the likelihood that a child will be disconnected in making the transition from
adolescence to adulthood. In turn, being disconnected may contribute to youth being poor,
especially among youth who are no longer living at home with parents or other family members
to contribute to their support.
The analysis of poverty in this section is based on 2013 income of related family members in a
household as reported as part of the CPS for 2013. Income includes pre-tax money income from
all sources, including wages, salaries, and benefits, such as unemployment compensation and
Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Youth were considered poor if their annual family pre-tax
money income in 2013 fell below Census Bureau poverty income thresholds. Poverty thresholds
vary by family size and composition. A youth living alone, with no other family members, would
be considered poor in the previous year if his/her pre-tax money income was under $12,119; for a
youth under age 18 living with a single parent and no other related family members, the youth
and his/her parent would be considered poor if their family income was below $15,679; and, for a
youth over age 18 living with both parents and a younger sibling (under age 18), and no other
related family members, they would be considered poor if their family income was below
$23,624. 49 Figure 5 shows that in 2013, 44.0% of all disconnected youth were poor, compared to
16.8% of their connected peers. While rates of poverty for connected youth were stable across age
groups, poverty increased with age for disconnected youth. Just over half (51.3%) of youth age 22
through 24 were in poor households, compared to 37.4% of youth ages 16 through 18 and 37.3%
of youth ages 19 through 21. The rates of household poverty among connected youth ranged from
15.5% for youth ages 16 through 18 and 18.0% for those ages 19 through 21.
Poverty status appears to be strongly correlated with educational attainment. This is not
surprising, given that higher rates of educational attainment are associated with greater job
attachment and higher wages. By the definition of disconnected youth used in this analysis, none
were working in 2013, so none had earnings (though some were living with family members with
earnings). Connected youth were working or in school, and presumably drawing income from
their jobs, or financial aid. Parental or other income may also contribute to their support, even
when youth are no longer living at home. Figure 6 shows the percentage of poor disconnected
and connected youth ages 19 through 24 by educational attainment. Disconnected youth in each
grouping of educational attainment—lacks high school diploma, high school diploma or GED, or
some schooling beyond high school—were about two to three times more likely to be poor than
connected youth.
Still, higher educational attainment appears to have provided disconnected youth with more of a
buffer from poverty. Figure 6 shows that the rate of poverty was higher among disconnected
youth without a high school diploma (56.7%) than among their disconnected counterparts with
more education (37.0% to 42.5%). Yet even disconnected youth with some schooling beyond high
school were more likely than connected youth lacking a high school diploma to live in poor
households, 37.0% and 29.6% respectively.
49 Census Bureau, “Poverty Thresholds,” http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/threshld/.
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Figure 5. Poverty Status of Disconnected and Connected Youth Ages 16-24,
by Age Group 2014
(Povery Status Based on Family Income in 2013)
Source: Congressional Research Service based on analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau 2014 Current
Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC).
Notes: Disconnected youth are youth who were not working or in school at the time of the survey and were
reported as having not worked during the previous year for reasons other than going to school.
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Figure 6. Poverty Status of Disconnected and Connected Youth Ages 19-24,
by Level of Educational Attainment, 2014
(Poverty Status Based on Family Income in 2013)
Source: Congressional Research Service based on analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau 2014 Current
Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC).
Notes: Disconnected youth are youth who were not working or in school at the time of the survey and were
reported as having not worked during the previous year for reasons other than going to school.
Living Arrangements
A growing body of social science research suggests that the transition to adulthood for young
people today is becoming longer and more complex. 50 During this period, youth rely heavily on
their families for financial support, and many continue to live with their parents beyond the
traditional age of high school. Disconnected youth, however, may be less likely than their peers to
rely on supports from their parents. A 2008 study by the Government Accountability Office
would suggest this. GAO included in its definition of the disconnected population those youth
“who lack family or other social supports.” 51
The CRS analysis evaluated whether disconnected youth were more or less likely to live with one
or both parents. This analysis is based on responses to CPS questions about living alone or with
parent(s), another family member, spouse, and/or non-relative. The family structure of
50 CRS Report RL33975, Vulnerable Youth: Background and Policies.
51 U.S. Government Accountability Office, Disconnected Youth: Federal Action Could Address Some of the Challenges
Faced by Local Programs That Reconnect Youth Education and Employment, GAO-08-313, February 2008, p. 1.
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disconnected youth tends to differ from that of their peers. 52 Figure 7 shows that disconnected
youth, overall, were more likely to live with only one parent or no parent at all, than connected
youth, who were more likely than their disconnected counterparts to live with both parents.
Among youth ages 16 through 18, disconnected youth are about equally likely to be living with
one parent (40.7%) than with two parents (41.8%), whereas connected youth are twice as likely to
be living with both parents (62.5%) than with just one (30.8%). Social science research indicates
that children who grow up in mother-only families (or with their mother and step-father) are more
likely than children raised with both biological parents to have certain negative outcomes,
including poverty-level incomes. 53 Moreover, within the 16-to-18 age group, nearly one in five
disconnected youth (17.5%) were living apart from parents all together, compared to about one in
fifteen connected youth (6.7%), reflecting a home environment absent direct parental support and
supervision.
Among the oldest youth, ages 22 through 24, a larger share of connected youth (56.7%) lived
apart from their parents in 2014 than disconnected youth (48.0%). Given that many disconnected
youth are not earning income and may not have strong social networks, they may have no other
choice but to live at home. Reciprocally, it appears that their connected, older peers are
“fledging,” and beginning to become financially independent from their families.
Figure 8 depicts youth poverty status by living arrangement. The figure shows that disconnected
youth are more likely to be poor than are their connected counterparts, even when accounting for
living arrangement. Among youth living with both parents, disconnected youth were almost three
times more likely than connected youth to be poor (15.7% versus 5.8%, respectively). Poverty
rates were higher for youth living in single-parent families than in dual-parent families, but the
poverty rate of disconnected youth in single-parent families (46.6%) was twice that of connected
youth living in such families (22.8%). Poverty rates were highest among youth living apart from
their parents; among disconnected youth 65.3% were poor, a rate over twice that of connected
youth (29.0%).
52 For further discussion of the influence of family structure on socioeconomic outcomes and financial well-being in
adulthood, see CRS Report RL34756, Nonmarital Childbearing: Trends, Reasons, and Public Policy Interventions.
53 For further information, see CRS Report R41431, Child Well-Being and Noncustodial Fathers.
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Figure 7. Living Arrangements of Disconnected and Connected Youth Ages 16-24,
by Age Group, 2014
Source: Congressional Research Service based on analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau 2014 Current
Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC).
Notes: Disconnected youth are youth who were not working or in school at the time of the survey and were
reported as having not worked during the previous year for reasons other than going to school.
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Figure 8. Poverty Status of Disconnected and Connected Youth Ages 16 to 24,
by Living Arrangement, 2014
(Poverty Status Based on Family Income in 2013)
Source: Congressional Research Service based on analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau 2014 Current
Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC).
Notes: Disconnected youth are youth who were not working or in school at the time of the survey and were
reported as having not worked during the previous year for reasons other than going to school.
Characteristics of Parents Living with Disconnected Youth
The CPS asks only about those individuals who reside in the same household. Therefore, the CRS
analysis was able to evaluate only the characteristics of the parents of connected and disconnected
youth if they resided together. Approximately 1.5 million disconnected youth, or 58.4% of the
disconnected population, lived with their parents (compared to 69.0% of connected youth).
The CRS analysis evaluated the education and employment status of parents at a point in time in
2014. The analysis examined this status among parents of youth in single-parent and dual-parent
households. Figure 9 presents information about the educational attainment of parents of
disconnected and connected youth. Parents were categorized based on whether they (1) lacked a
high school diploma or its equivalent; (2) had a high school diploma or its equivalent; or (3)
graduated high school and had additional schooling. Among both youth living with one parent
only and youth living with both parents, the parents of disconnected youth were much more likely
than parents of connected youth to lack a high school diploma or its equivalent.
Further, among single-parent households, 39.3% of disconnected youth had parents who had
some schooling beyond high school, compared to more than half (54.6%) of the parents of their
connected counterparts. Among dual-parent households, about 30% of disconnected youth had
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Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
both parents with some education beyond high school, compared to about 48% of their connected
counterparts.
Figure 9. Educational Attainment of Disconnected and Connected Youths’ Parents,
for Youth Ages 16-24 Living with One or Both Parents, 2014
Source: Congressional Research Service based on analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau 2014 Current
Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC).
Notes: Disconnected youth are youth who were not working or in school at the time of the survey and were
reported as having not worked during the previous year for reasons other than going to school.
The employment status of parents was also evaluated. Figure 10 shows employment status
among parents of disconnected and connected youth by household type. Among youth living in
single-parent households, disconnected youth were more likely to have parents who were not
employed (49.7%) at the time of the survey than connected youth (25.6%). Among youth living in
dual-parent households, the divide was even greater: for 16.1% of disconnected youth, both
parents were not employed at the time of the survey, compared to 5.3% of connected youth.
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Figure 10. Employment Status of Disconnected and Connected Youths’ Parents, for
Youth Ages 16-24 Living with One or Both Parents, 2014
Source: Congressional Research Service based on analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau 2014 Current
Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC).
Notes: Disconnected youth are youth who were not working or in school at the time of the survey and were
reported as having not worked during the previous year for reasons other than going to school.
Differences in parents’ characteristics may account in part for disconnected youths’ higher
poverty rates when compared to their connected counterparts, as seen earlier in Figure 5. As
mentioned, disconnected youth are more likely than their connected peers to live in single-parent
families, who tend to have higher poverty rates than dual-parent families. Further, in each family
type their parents are less likely to have completed high school, or to have continued their
education beyond high school (Figure 9), and their parents are less likely to be employed (Figure
10). Youths’ family living arrangements, parental characteristics, and poverty status may all
contribute to whether a youth becomes disconnected, or stays connected, in making the transition
from adolescence to adulthood. These issues in the context of other research are discussed further
in this report’s conclusion.
Trends Over Time
Trends over time are seen in rates of disconnection among youth ages 16 through 24 over the past
27 years (1988 through 2014). The overall rate of disconnection, 6.1% in 2014, was higher than
the 4.1% rate of 1988, the first year depicted in Figure 11, below. In the intervening years there
was considerable variation in the overall rate, ranging from a high of 7.5% in 2010 to a low of
3.9% in both 1999 and 2000.
The figure shows that trends in rates of disconnection follow economic cycles, which should be
expected, as disconnection is tied, by definition, to not being employed. Unemployment tends to
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Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
be a lagging economic indicator, usually peaking for the population as a whole well past the end
of economic recessions. Three economic recessions occurred over the 27-year period depicted in
Figure 11 and subsequent figures (marked as red-shaded bars: July 1990 to March 1991, March
2001 to November 2001, and December 2007 to March 2009). In each case, disconnection rates
rose with the onset of economic recession, and continued to rise beyond the recession’s end,
before falling. Most recently, the overall disconnection rate for 16 to 24 year olds rose from 4.9%
in 2007, just prior to recession, to 7.5% in 2010, and fell in each subsequent year, to 6.1% in
2014.
Sex
Figure 11 shows that disconnection rates for females are consistently higher than those for males
over the period. The differences are larger in earlier years (as much as 3.5 percentage points in
1989) than in later years (as little as 0.1 percentage points in 2010). Disconnection rates for
females peaked in 1994, at 8.2%, and for males, at 7.4% in 2010. As noted earlier, single
parenthood is a contributing factor to higher rates of disconnection among females than males.
The presence of a child could make connections to work or school for these young women
tenuous.
Figure 11 shows that the trends in disconnection rates for males and females have for the most
part paralleled each other over the 1988 to 2014 period. An apparent exception shows a
divergence in male and female disconnection rates over the 2005 to 2008 period, during which
the male disconnection rate dropped and the female rate rose. CRS does not have an explanation
for this divergence in rates by sex over this period, but reductions in childbearing may play a role.
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Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
Figure 11. Rates of Disconnected Youth Ages 16-24, by Sex, 1988-2014
Source: Congressional Research Service based on analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau 1988 through
2014 Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC).
Notes: Disconnected youth are youth who were not working or in school at the time of the survey and were
reported as having not worked during the previous year for reasons other than going to school.
Age and Sex
CRS examined disconnection over time by sex across age groups—16 through 18, 19 through 21,
and 22 through 24. Figure 12 and Figure 13 display these data for males and females,
respectively. The figures show that disconnection rates were consistently lower for male and
female youth ages 16 through 18 than among their older counterparts. For males (Figure 12)
disconnection rates for 19 to 21 year olds tended to be slightly above those of 22 to 24 year olds
in each year since 1998, though rates of disconnection were nearly identical in some recent years
(2011, 2013, and 2014). For females (Figure 13), there was no distinct difference between the
two oldest age groups from 1998 through 2002; however, beginning with 2003, rates of
disconnection trended somewhat above their slightly younger counterparts. Disconnection rates
for both males and females in each age group depict some of the cyclical patterns that were
associated in the earlier discussion with general economic conditions. The trend in the youngest
age group shows less cyclical variation than the older groups, as school tends to harbor the
youngest group even in hard economic times, whereas older youth are subject more to labor
market conditions. Females in the oldest group, ages 22 through 24, showed marked increases in
their disconnection rates from 1999 to 2011, with disconnection rates more than doubling over the
period, from 4.6% to 10.1% , respectively (Figure 13). Females ages 19 through 21 saw their
disconnection rate increase by almost four full percentage points from a historic low of 5.7% in
2004, to 9.7% in 2010 (Figure 13). Rates of disconnectedness among all three age groups
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fluctuated from 2011 through 2014, ranging from 2.1% to 3.5% for 16 through 19 year olds; 7.5%
to 8.6% for 19 through 21 year olds; and 8.9% to 10.1% for 22 through 24 year olds.
Figure 12. Rates of Disconnected Males Ages 16-24, by Age Group, 1988-2014
Source: Congressional Research Service based on analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau 1988 through
2014 Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC).
Notes: Disconnected youth are youth who were not working or in school at the time of the survey and were
reported as having not worked during the previous year for reasons other than going to school.
Congressional Research Service 31

Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
Figure 13. Rates of Disconnected Females Ages 16-24, by Age Group, 2014
Source: Congressional Research Service based on analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau 1988 through
2014 Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC).
Notes: Disconnected youth are youth who were not working or in school at the time of the survey and were
reported as having not worked during the previous year for reasons other than going to school.
Race, Ethnicity, and Sex
As shown in Table 1, earlier, minorities are overrepresented among the disconnected youth
population. Perhaps most striking is the percentage of black (non-Hispanic) males who are
disconnected relative to their white (non-Hispanic) and Hispanic counterparts (see Figure 14).
Over the period depicted, the disconnected rate for black males averaged 6.6 percentage points
above that of their white non-Hispanic counterparts, and 4.7 percentage points above that of
Hispanic males. The gap was largest in 2003 when the disconnection rate of black males reached
a historic high of 12.4%, which was 9.8 percentage points above their white counterparts (2.6%),
and 8.9 percentage points above that of male Hispanic youth (3.5%). In that year, black males
were nearly five times more likely to be disconnected than white males, and three and one-half
times more likely than Hispanic males. Black male youth experienced a drop in their
disconnection rate, with the rate being nearly cut in half, from 12.4% in 2003 to 6.8% in 2008.
The rate of disconnection increased again in 2009 and 2010—and then generally increased over
the period from 2011 through 2014, when the rate of disconnection for black males was 13.1%.
This is in contrast to Hispanic and white males whose rates of disconnection decreased in most
years over the 2010 through 2014 period. Notably, Hispanic and white males had nearly identical
rates of disconnection at about 5.0% in both 2013 and 2014.
Congressional Research Service 32

Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
Figure 14. Rates of Disconnected Males Ages 16-24, by Race and Ethnicity, 1998-2014
Source: Congressional Research Service based on analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau 1988 through
2014 Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC).
Notes: Disconnected youth are youth who were not working or in school at the time of the survey and were
reported as having not worked during the previous year for reasons other than going to school.
Turning to females, Figure 15 shows marked differences in the level and trend in disconnection
rates among white (non-Hispanic), black (non-Hispanic), and Hispanic females over the 1988
through 2014 period. Disconnection rates for black (non-Hispanic) and Hispanic females were
consistently higher than those of their white (non-Hispanic) counterparts. However, while black
and Hispanic females experienced substantial reductions in their rates of disconnection from their
peak rates, the rate of disconnection among white females steadily increased since 2000. Figure
15 shows that among black females, their disconnection rate fell from a high of 15.1% in 1993 to
a low of 6.3% in 1999—a near 60% reduction. The rates increased in subsequent years, ranging
from 6.7% (in 2001) to 12.2% (in 2010). The 2014 rate of disconnection for black females of
8.6% was the lowest in the period since 2005. For Hispanic females, their rate fell from a high of
15.7% in 1994 to a low of 7% in 2014—a 55% reduction. The rate for Hispanic females reached a
record low in 2014. The white females’ disconnection rate fell from a high of 5.6% in 1994 to a
low of 2.7% in 2000, but increased in each succeeding year through 2011. That year, the rate of
disconnection among white females was at its highest point—5.9%. The rate for white females
declined in each subsequent year through 2014.
Black female youth in particular experienced remarkable reductions in disconnection, due likely
to reductions in childbearing. For example, in 1993, the peak year of black female disconnection,
a total of 15.1% were disconnected; having a child appears to have contributed to attaining that
status for 11.3% of the population, and other factors contributed for the remaining 3.8%. By
1999, the year with the lowest proportion of disconnected black female youth, 6.3% were
Congressional Research Service 33

Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
disconnected. The rate for those having a child was just 2.9%, or about one-quarter of what it was
in 1993.
Figure 15. Rates of Disconnected Females Ages 16-24, by Race and Ethnicity,
1998-2014
Source: Congressional Research Service based on analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau 1988 through
2014 Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC).
Notes: Disconnected youth are youth who were not working or in school at the time of the survey and were
reported as having not worked during the previous year for reasons other than going to school.
Implications for Policy
The time trend data presented show an increase in the overall rate of disconnection among youth
in 2014 compared to 27 years earlier, in 1988. However, there was considerable variation in the
overall rate and in disconnection rates among and between racial and ethnic groups, by sex.
Notably disconnection among all single parenting females declined since the mid-1990s,
particularly for young black women. The trend data show that youth disconnection follows
economic cycles, as expected. During recessions, when jobs in the economy become scarce, rates
of youth disconnection increase; during periods of economic expansion, rates of youth
disconnection decrease. The data presented in this report end during 2013 and the first part of
2014 (i.e., February through April), four years after the end of the most recent recession.
In addition to overall economic conditions, a number of other factors may contribute to changes
in the rates of disconnection. For example, the following factors may have lent to the decreasing
rates of disconnection, particularly among black single mothers, since the mid-1990s: an
expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), phased in between 1994 and 1996; welfare
reform in 1996, which introduced time limits and work requirements for families receiving
Congressional Research Service 34

Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
benefits and services under the newly enacted Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
block grant; and declining teen birth rates, beginning in approximately 1992.
Given the state of the current economy, youth disconnection rates would be expected to stabilize.
For females, their overall disconnection rate will depend not only on the base rate, depicted as the
rate of disconnection among females without children as a percent of all females, and the
additional rate of disconnection tied to having a child and not being married to a connected
husband. The rate of disconnection among females who are not parents has been on the rise in
recent years. Given the large declines in the rate of disconnection among females since the early
1990s relating to childbearing, their overall rate of disconnection in near-future years may not
reach the levels seen in the early 1990s and preceding years. Overall, young single mothers are
more likely to be connected to school or work than to be disconnected from both. Moreover, from
the early- to mid-1990s to around 2000, the likelihood of younger single mothers being connected
to work or school increased, and their rate of disconnection decreased. Since then their rate of
disconnection has increased, but not yet to the levels seen in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Being connected to work or school is widely seen as important for both youth and greater society.
As discussed above, the individual costs of disconnection are great. While out of school or work,
youth forego gaining experience that can lead to better employment opportunities. They are also
more likely to live in poverty. Further, the young children of disconnected youth are at risk of
growing up in poverty, which as discussed above, can have far reaching consequences in
adulthood. The costs to society may also be great, though little research has been done in this
area. 54 Youth who are disconnected may pose a financial burden if they rely on cash and non-cash
assistance programs, or if they become homeless. In an increasingly global economy and with
retirement underway for Baby Boomers, society is seen as having a strong interest in ensuring
that all young people have the educational attainment and employment experience to become
skilled workers, contributing taxpayers, and participants in civic life.
Interventions to connect youth to school and work depend on a number of factors. The research
literature has devoted attention to the timing of interventions. The timing can target early
childhood, the elementary and middle school years, or the high school years and just beyond.
During each of these phases, developmental outcomes are influenced by numerous environmental
and social factors, including family structure, stability, and functioning; economic circumstances;
education; health care; and schooling. 55 They are also influenced by innate and inherited
characteristics. These factors can influence how well youth ultimately make the transition to
adulthood. The research literature has identified certain markers of risk and problem behaviors in
the middle and older youth years that are associated with later negative outcomes. 56 Markers of
risk suggest that youth will likely experience poor outcomes in adolescence and beyond. These
markers are tangible indicators that can be measured or documented, and include low school
performance and involvement in the child welfare system. Problem behaviors are activities that
have the potential to hurt youth, the community, or both. Behaviors include early sexual
experimentation; truancy; use of tobacco, alcohol, or other drugs; running away from home or
foster care; and association with delinquent peers.
54 See, Clive R. Belfield, Henry M. Levin, and Rachel Rosen, The Economic Value of Opportunity Youth.
55 For further information about the role of these factors in childhood development, see CRS Report RL33975,
Vulnerable Youth: Background and Policies.
56 Heather Koball et al., Synthesis of Research and Resources to Support at-Risk Youth, Mathematica Policy Research,
Inc., ACF Youth Demonstration Development Project, June 21, 2011. (Hereinafter, Heather Koball et al., Synthesis of
Research and Resources to Support at-Risk Youth.)
Congressional Research Service 35

Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
James Heckman and others assert that investments in early childhood can, in part, serve as a
protective factor against poor outcomes, especially when coupled with investments during the
elementary school years. 57 Other research has focused on the benefits of intervening at an older
age when young people are at risk of or are already experiencing negative outcomes. 58 And still
other research has begun to examine the effects of a system of interventions that targets youth
throughout their early life, from the infant years to young adulthood. 59 Youth might benefit from
interventions during all stages of their early life, particularly if they begin to exhibit markers of
risk such as low school performance.
Interventions can also focus on particular institutions or systems, such as the family, community,
schools, and job training programs. These interventions may help to address some of the reasons
why youth are not working or in school. First, interventions in the family at all stages could
benefit disconnected youth. 60 Many of the disconnected youth in the analysis are parenting.
Adequate child care may be one way in which to assist these youth in becoming connected to
school or work and remain connected. Further, given the possibility that disconnection is
intergenerational, early parenting classes or home-based interventions could provide a buffer for
the children of disconnected youth from experiencing negative outcomes later in their lives. In the
community, interventions could focus on assisting youth with disabilities since they make up a
large share of the disconnected youth population. Such supportive services might include mental
health care. Young disconnected single mothers could benefit from the involvement of their
children’s fathers. Responsible fatherhood programs seek to engage fathers in assisting with
childrearing and child support, which may in turn enable mothers to secure child care and other
assistance so they can work or attend school. Other community interventions could involve
programs that encourage young women to delay childbearing, as parenting appears to be strongly
associated with disconnection among females.
Finally, school and job training programs that provide wraparound services—counseling, child
care, transportation, assistance with attaining a high school diploma, and preparation for the
workforce—may help to reengage youth. A number of interventions have been designed in recent
years that seek to address multiple aspects of a youth’s circumstances. 61 In addition, sexual
education in schools may help to encourage sexual avoidance and teen pregnancy. 62 However, as
shown in this report, disconnected youth make up a diverse group and no one intervention is
likely to be a panacea.
57 James J. Heckman and Dimitriy V. Masterov, The Productivity of Investing in Young Children, 2007.
58 See, Rhonda Tsoi-A-Fatt, A Collective Responsibility, A Collective Work: Supporting the Path to Positive Life
Outcomes for Youth in Economically Distressed Communities, Center for Law and Social Policy, May 2008; and
Heather Koball et al., Synthesis of Research and Resources to Support at-Risk Youth.
59 The Harlem Children’s Zone in New York is one such model that provides wrap-around services for children of all
ages. Services include parenting courses, community services, educational programs at HCZ charters schools, and
foster care prevention services, among other services.
60 For an overview of federal programs and policies to assist vulnerable youth across several domains, including
workforce development, education, juvenile justice and delinquency prevention, social services, public health, and
national and community service, see CRS Report RL33975, Vulnerable Youth: Background and Policies.
61 See for example, John Bridgeland and Tess Mason-Elder, National Roadmap for Opportunity Youth, Civic
Enterprises, September 2012; Nancy Martin and Samuel Halperin, “Whatever It Takes: How Twelve Communities Are
Reconnecting Out-of-School Youth,” American Youth Policy Forum, 2006; National League of Cities, “Beyond City
Limits: Cross-System Collaboration to Reengage Disconnected Youth,” 2007; and U.S. Government Accountability
Office, Disconnected Youth: Federal Action Could Address Some of the Challenges Faced by Local Programs That
Reconnect Youth Education and Employment, GAO-08-313, February 2008.
62 For further discussion, see CRS Report RL34756, Nonmarital Childbearing: Trends, Reasons, and Public Policy
Interventions, by Carmen Solomon-Fears.
Congressional Research Service 36

Disconnected Youth: A Look at 16 to 24 Year Olds Who Are Not Working or In School
Author Contact Information
Adrienne L. Fernandes-Alcantara
Specialist in Social Policy
afernandes@crs.loc.gov, 7-9005
Acknowledgments
Thomas Gabe, former CRS Specialist in Social Policy, was the original co-author of this report. Gene Falk,
Carmen Solomon-Fears, Melinda Gish, Karen Spar, Jeffrey J. Kuenzi, and Rebecca R. Skinner provided
helpful comments and insights.
Congressional Research Service 37

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Attachment C
Disconnected Youth - Out of School
and Out of Work in Rural America
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2/9/2018 Disconnected Youth: Out of School and Out of Work in Rural America
Disconnected Youth: Out of School and
Out of Work in Rural America
April 27, 2017 By Tim Henderson
Pocomoke High School teacher Brooke Gillespie and senior Rebeka Kline, who plans to study
art at a local community college, decorate vacant storefronts in rural Pocomoke City,
Maryland, as part of an after-school program to teach job skills. “After they graduate, there
isn’t much here” for young people looking for jobs, Gillespie said.
© The Pew Charitable Trusts
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2/9/2018 Disconnected Youth: Out of School and Out of Work in Rural America
POCOMOKE CITY, Md. — Large numbers of young people who aren’t in school and don’t have a
job used to be a problem that mostly afflicted America’s cities. But the share of “disconnected
youth” in rural areas has soared over the past five years, overtaking the rate in urban areas and
forcing state and local officials to look for new ways to help young people stay in school and get
jobs.
Here in rural Worcester County, Maryland, a popular summer destination that includes Ocean
City and other beach resorts, almost 25 percent of people 16 to 24 are unemployed and out of
school, according to a recent state report.
That’s the highest rate in the state, higher even than in Baltimore, where about 20 percent of
young people are disconnected. And it’s being felt hard in this quaint small town, where good
seasonal jobs are 40 miles away and the nearest job-training program is about 25 miles away.
“Traditionally the perception has been that this is happening in urban areas and that’s where the
funding and the research has taken place,” said Christina Church, a policy analyst in the Maryland
Governor’s Office for Children. Areas like Worcester and nearby Caroline counties “have in some
ways fallen through the cracks,” she said.
Nationwide, 4.9 million youth in all kinds of communities are disconnected, according to Measure
of America, part of the nonprofit Social Science Research Council. Disconnected youth cost
taxpayers as much as $93 billion a year in lost revenue and increased social service spending,
according to Opportunity Nation, a coalition of nonprofits.
About 20 percent of young people in extremely rural areas — those like Worcester County with no
cities larger than 10,000 people — were jobless and not in school, on average, over a five-year
period, from 2010 to 2014, Measure of America said in a March report. That’s much higher than
the rate for counties in urban centers (about 14 percent) or for suburban counties (12 percent).
“These vulnerable young people are cut off from the people, institutions, and experiences that
would otherwise help them develop the knowledge, skills, maturity, and sense of purpose
required to live rewarding lives as adults,” the Measure of America report concluded. “And the
negative effects of youth disconnection ricochet across the economy, the social sector, the
criminal justice system, and the political landscape, affecting us all.”
The election of President Donald Trump has drawn fresh attention to the plight of rural America.
On Wednesday, the National Governors Association called on Congress to restore funding to a
federal program that provides funding to rural communities and school districts to help offset lost
tax revenue from timber harvests on federal lands. Congress let the Secure Rural Schools program
expire last year, and the governors said rural communities have struggled to absorb the
unplanned cuts.
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2/9/2018 Disconnected Youth: Out of School and Out of Work in Rural America
“We’re living now with some of the consequences of a bifurcated country,” said Patrick Carr, a
Rutgers University sociologist who studies rural America. “It’s not good for America to have so
many people disconnected.”
In some places, officials are taking steps to address the problem.
In California’s Silicon Valley, a partnership between Santa Clara County, the city of San Jose, and
local schools and employers opened a “re-engagement center” about 18 months ago to help youth
find jobs or enroll in college or high school in rural Gilroy. The distance between Gilroy and urban
San Jose, about 30 miles, was an obvious problem for youth, said Nicky Ramos-Beban, interim
principal for the centers.
A similar partnership called the Maine Youth Transition Collaborative is working with schools and
employers to help people in foster care in rural areas stay in school or find jobs. The Connecticut
Opportunity Project, in a September 2016 report, found “acute need in rural areas” of the state as
well as struggling cities to help young people finish school, get jobs or both. Disconnected young
people cost the state an estimated $900 million a year in uncollected taxes and spending on
services and public safety, the report said.
In Maryland, Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, made lowering the disconnected rate a priority for
the Office for Children in next year’s budget, mostly because it could save money in the long run,
Church said.
“When youth reconnect with work and school, not only does spending on social services
decrease, but also tax revenue and economic participation increase, which is good for the state’s
bottom line,” Church said.
The Office for Children has asked counties, including Worcester, to propose plans to help solve the
problem, such as dropout recovery programs, college prep courses, apprenticeships and job
training. Proposals are due by the end of April to be considered for inclusion in the next state
budget.
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2/9/2018 Disconnected Youth: Out of School and Out of Work in Rural America
Behind the Numbers
The disconnected rate reflects both education and employment, and the two factors have evolved
differently in rural and urban areas. In 2000, disconnected rates were lower in rural areas than in
urban areas. But since then, fortunes have reversed, according to a separate Stateline analysis of
data from the U.S. Census Bureau provided by ipums.org at the University of Minnesota.
(The definition of rural areas in this data — counties that are not in areas near sizeable cities — is
broader than that used by Measure of America, and includes about 13 percent of the nation’s
population, compared to 6 percent under the Measure of America definition.)
In 2000, 11 percent of young people in rural areas were disconnected, compared to 15 percent in
urban areas, according to the Stateline analysis. But since 2013, the rural rate has been at least 3
percentage points higher than the urban rate. In 2016, 17 percent of young people in rural areas
were disconnected, compared to 13 percent in urban areas.
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2/9/2018 Disconnected Youth: Out of School and Out of Work in Rural America
The shift is due mostly to a decline in high school enrollment in rural areas after 2011, and an
increase in college enrollment in urban areas over the same period. Rural employment also is a
large part of the issue, as jobs in many parts of the country have failed to recover from the
recession while urban jobs have bounced back and climbed from pre-recession peaks.
Schools all over rural America are contemplating changes to get some students more job skills
while still in high school and to ensure that others go to college and graduate.
“It is no longer enough for schools to simply teach reading, math and science,” said Randy
Watson, the Kansas education commissioner. Some students may need to spend most of their
time building skills rather than on academic courses, he said.
And rural isolation can lead to limited horizons. “For many students, the only career opportunities
they know are those they are exposed to within their own hometowns,” Watson said. “In smaller,
rural areas these may be limited.”
For rural youth, a deep attachment to home can also make it difficult to leave to pursue
opportunities elsewhere, said Richard Settersten, a professor of family science at Oregon State
University.
“It has to do with their often deep connections to place, and the challenges associated with
leaving those communities and navigating worlds that are sometimes so foreign from what
they’ve known,” Settersten said.
‘Not Much Here for Them’
The tourist trade swells the population in the northern part of Worcester County to hundreds of
thousands in the summer, as families from nearby Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., flock to the
gleaming white hotels and pristine summer houses of Ocean City and nearby beach towns.
But in the south end of the county, there are many vacant, peeling storefronts and some
abandoned and overgrown houses in downtown Pocomoke City. And year-round job prospects for
local youth are dismal.
Jennifer Lamade, program director for the county health department, said the growing stress on
the local population can be seen in the increasing number of drug- and alcohol-related deaths,
which she said jumped from six in 2013 to 16 in 2015, because of increases in heroin and fentanyl
overdoses. The rate of anxiety and other mental health issues has tripled since 2008, according
the county’s annual health indicators report.
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2/9/2018 Disconnected Youth: Out of School and Out of Work in Rural America
Lamade said the county health department is now looking for input on how to reduce the youth
disconnection rate and will apply for state funds. The most likely use, she said, would be to help
young people in remote areas of the county get transportation to job skills training in Salisbury,
about 25 miles from Pocomoke City.
Even in summer, when Ocean City’s tourist trade is in high gear, Worcester County’s
unemployment rate is higher than the state average: 5.7 to 4.4 percent last July. And the
unemployment rate more than doubles in the winter months — it was 13.5 percent in January.
That’s particularly tough for young people graduating from high school without college plans.
“After they graduate, there isn’t much here for them if they stay. They can work in Ocean City but
that’s a long way away and only for a few months,” said Brooke Gillespie, a Pocomoke High School
teacher who volunteers after school to help students learn job skills so they can be competitive
for a shrinking number of good jobs in the area.
The county’s population has grown slightly in the last 10 years, by about 800 people between
2006 and 2016, about 2 percent, which is good by rural standards. The rural population of the U.S.
dropped by about 33,000 a year since 2010, though the decrease lessened to about 4,000 in 2015,
the latest year available, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
But Worcester County also lost almost 1,200 jobs in construction and manufacturing in that time.
Shore areas like Worcester once had thriving tomato canneries and seafood processing plants
that provided work in the offseason and drew immigrants to small towns like Pocomoke, said
Andrew Lazur, director of the University of Maryland’s Sea Grant program, which works with local
governments on shore issues.
But it was hard, low-paid work even in its heyday in the 1970s, and much of the industry has moved
overseas, Lazur said.
“The world is changing. Twenty years ago, kids liked to work part time in the summer in these
oyster and crab industries,” Lazur said. “Now nobody wants that type of job anymore.”
Pocomoke City Manager Ernie Crofoot said there’s a problem with both job availability and worker
availability in the southern part of the county. Young people need more and better jobs than they
can get at places like the Wal-Mart on Ocean Highway, but employers often don’t see a large
enough pool of potential workers.
“It’s a chicken and egg thing,” Crofoot said. The city is trying to help attract manufacturing jobs to
a local industrial park, but sometimes has a hard time making a case despite high unemployment.
“They ask me, ‘Where are the workers going to come from?’ ”
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In The New Millennium
Q-1 2026
LIV Outcome-Based Thinking Q-2 2026
LV Transformational Social Leadership Q-3 2026
LVI The Cycle of Poverty Q-4 2026
Vol. XIII 2027 Raising Awareness
LVII ReEngineering Juvenile Justice Q-1 2027
LVIII Corporations Q-2 2027
LVIX The Prison Industrial Complex Q-3 2027
LX Restoration of Rights Q-4 2027
Vol. XIV 2028 Culturally Relevant Programming
LXI Community Culture Q-1 2028
LXII Corporate Culture Q-2 2028
LXIII Strategic Cultural Planning Q-3 2028
LXIV
The Cross-Sector/ Coordinated
Service Approach to Delinquency
Prevention
Q-4 2028
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Vol. XV 2029 Inner-Cities Revitalization
LXIV
LXV
LXVI
Part I – Strategic Housing
Revitalization
(The Twenty Percent Profit Margin)
Part II – Jobs Training, Educational
Redevelopment
and Economic Empowerment
Part III - Financial Literacy
and Sustainability
Q-1 2029
Q-2 2029
Q-3 2029
LXVII Part IV – Solutions for Homelessness Q-4 2029
LXVIII
The Strategic Home Mortgage
Initiative
Bonus
Vol. XVI 2030 Sustainability
LXVIII Social Program Sustainability Q-1 2030
LXIX
The Advocacy Foundation
Endowments Initiative
Q-2 2030
LXX Capital Gains Q-3 2030
LXXI Sustainability Investments Q-4 2030
Vol. XVII 2031 The Justice Series
LXXII Distributive Justice Q-1 2031
LXXIII Retributive Justice Q-2 2031
LXXIV Procedural Justice Q-3 2031
LXXV (75) Restorative Justice Q-4 2031
LXXVI Unjust Legal Reasoning Bonus
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Vol. XVIII 2032 Public Policy
LXXVII Public Interest Law Q-1 2032
LXXVIII Reforming Public Policy Q-2 2032
LXXVIX ... Q-3 2032
LXXVX ... Q-4 2032
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The e-Advocate Journal
of Theological Jurisprudence
Vol. I - 2017
The Theological Origins of Contemporary Judicial Process
Scriptural Application to The Model Criminal Code
Scriptural Application for Tort Reform
Scriptural Application to Juvenile Justice Reformation
Vol. II - 2018
Scriptural Application for The Canons of Ethics
Scriptural Application to Contracts Reform
& The Uniform Commercial Code
Scriptural Application to The Law of Property
Scriptural Application to The Law of Evidence
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Legal Missions International
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Issue Title Quarterly
Vol. I 2015
I
II
God’s Will and The 21 st Century
Democratic Process
The Community
Engagement Strategy
Q-1 2015
Q-2 2015
III Foreign Policy Q-3 2015
IV
Public Interest Law
in The New Millennium
Q-4 2015
Vol. II 2016
V Ethiopia Q-1 2016
VI Zimbabwe Q-2 2016
VII Jamaica Q-3 2016
VIII Brazil Q-4 2016
Vol. III 2017
IX India Q-1 2017
X Suriname Q-2 2017
XI The Caribbean Q-3 2017
XII United States/ Estados Unidos Q-4 2017
Vol. IV 2018
XIII Cuba Q-1 2018
XIV Guinea Q-2 2018
XV Indonesia Q-3 2018
XVI Sri Lanka Q-4 2018
Vol. V 2019
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XVII Russia Q-1 2019
XVIII Australia Q-2 2019
XIV South Korea Q-3 2019
XV Puerto Rico Q-4 2019
Issue Title Quarterly
Vol. VI 2020
XVI Trinidad & Tobago Q-1 2020
XVII Egypt Q-2 2020
XVIII Sierra Leone Q-3 2020
XIX South Africa Q-4 2020
XX Israel Bonus
Vol. VII 2021
XXI Haiti Q-1 2021
XXII Peru Q-2 2021
XXIII Costa Rica Q-3 2021
XXIV China Q-4 2021
XXV Japan Bonus
Vol VIII 2022
XXVI Chile Q-1 2022
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The e-Advocate Juvenile Justice Report
______
Vol. I – Juvenile Delinquency in The US
Vol. II. – The Prison Industrial Complex
Vol. III – Restorative/ Transformative Justice
Vol. IV – The Sixth Amendment Right to The Effective Assistance of Counsel
Vol. V – The Theological Foundations of Juvenile Justice
Vol. VI – Collaborating to Eradicate Juvenile Delinquency
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The e-Advocate Newsletter
Genesis of The Problem
Family Structure
Societal Influences
Evidence-Based Programming
Strengthening Assets v. Eliminating Deficits
2012 - Juvenile Delinquency in The US
Introduction/Ideology/Key Values
Philosophy/Application & Practice
Expungement & Pardons
Pardons & Clemency
Examples/Best Practices
2013 - Restorative Justice in The US
2014 - The Prison Industrial Complex
25% of the World's Inmates Are In the US
The Economics of Prison Enterprise
The Federal Bureau of Prisons
The After-Effects of Incarceration/Individual/Societal
The Fourth Amendment Project
The Sixth Amendment Project
The Eighth Amendment Project
The Adolescent Law Group
2015 - US Constitutional Issues In The New Millennium
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2018 - The Theological Law Firm Academy
The Theological Foundations of US Law & Government
The Economic Consequences of Legal Decision-Making
The Juvenile Justice Legislative Reform Initiative
The EB-5 International Investors Initiative
2017 - Organizational Development
The Board of Directors
The Inner Circle
Staff & Management
Succession Planning
Bonus #1 The Budget
Bonus #2 Data-Driven Resource Allocation
2018 - Sustainability
The Data-Driven Resource Allocation Process
The Quality Assurance Initiative
The Advocacy Foundation Endowments Initiative
The Community Engagement Strategy
2019 - Collaboration
Critical Thinking for Transformative Justice
International Labor Relations
Immigration
God's Will & The 21st Century Democratic Process
The Community Engagement Strategy
The 21st Century Charter Schools Initiative
2020 - Community Engagement
Page 68 of 72

Extras
The Nonprofit Advisors Group Newsletters
The 501(c)(3) Acquisition Process
The Board of Directors
The Gladiator Mentality
Strategic Planning
Fundraising
501(c)(3) Reinstatements
The Collaborative US/ International Newsletters
How You Think Is Everything
The Reciprocal Nature of Business Relationships
Accelerate Your Professional Development
The Competitive Nature of Grant Writing
Assessing The Risks
Page 69 of 72

About The Author
John C (Jack) Johnson III
Founder & CEO
Jack was educated at Temple University, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Rutgers
Law School, in Camden, New Jersey. In 1999, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia to pursue
greater opportunities to provide Advocacy and Preventive Programmatic services for atrisk/
at-promise young persons, their families, and Justice Professionals embedded in the
Juvenile Justice process in order to help facilitate its transcendence into the 21 st Century.
There, along with a small group of community and faith-based professionals, “The Advocacy Foundation, Inc." was conceived
and developed over roughly a thirteen year period, originally chartered as a Juvenile Delinquency Prevention and Educational
Support Services organization consisting of Mentoring, Tutoring, Counseling, Character Development, Community Change
Management, Practitioner Re-Education & Training, and a host of related components.
The Foundation’s Overarching Mission is “To help Individuals, Organizations, & Communities Achieve Their Full Potential”, by
implementing a wide array of evidence-based proactive multi-disciplinary "Restorative & Transformative Justice" programs &
projects currently throughout the northeast, southeast, and western international-waters regions, providing prevention and support
services to at-risk/ at-promise youth, to young adults, to their families, and to Social Service, Justice and Mental
Health professionals” everywhere. The Foundation has since relocated its headquarters to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and been
expanded to include a three-tier mission.
In addition to his work with the Foundation, Jack also served as an Adjunct Professor of Law & Business at National-Louis
University of Atlanta (where he taught Political Science, Business & Legal Ethics, Labor & Employment Relations, and Critical
Thinking courses to undergraduate and graduate level students). Jack has also served as Board President for a host of wellestablished
and up & coming nonprofit organizations throughout the region, including “Visions Unlimited Community
Development Systems, Inc.”, a multi-million dollar, award-winning, Violence Prevention and Gang Intervention Social Service
organization in Atlanta, as well as Vice-Chair of the Georgia/ Metropolitan Atlanta Violence Prevention Partnership, a state-wide
300 organizational member, violence prevention group led by the Morehouse School of Medicine, Emory University and The
Original, Atlanta-Based, Martin Luther King Center.
Attorney Johnson’s prior accomplishments include a wide-array of Professional Legal practice areas, including Private Firm,
Corporate and Government postings, just about all of which yielded significant professional awards & accolades, the history and
chronology of which are available for review online. Throughout his career, Jack has served a wide variety of for-profit
corporations, law firms, and nonprofit organizations as Board Chairman, Secretary, Associate, and General Counsel since 1990.
www.TheAdvocacyFoundation.org
Clayton County Youth Services Partnership, Inc. – Chair; Georgia Violence Prevention Partnership, Inc – Vice Chair; Fayette
County NAACP - Legal Redress Committee Chairman; Clayton County Fatherhood Initiative Partnership – Principal
Investigator; Morehouse School of Medicine School of Community Health Feasibility Study - Steering Committee; Atlanta
Violence Prevention Capacity Building Project – Project Partner; Clayton County Minister’s Conference, President 2006-2007;
Liberty In Life Ministries, Inc. – Board Secretary; Young Adults Talk, Inc. – Board of Directors; ROYAL, Inc - Board of
Directors; Temple University Alumni Association; Rutgers Law School Alumni Association; Sertoma International; Our
Common Welfare Board of Directors – President)2003-2005; River’s Edge Elementary School PTA (Co-President); Summerhill
Community Ministries; Outstanding Young Men of America; Employee of the Year; Academic All-American - Basketball;
Church Trustee.
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www.TheAdvocacyFoundation.org
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