On Tuesday morning, Mayor Mike Duggan will be holding a press conference to announce a summer youth employment program that will be designed not merely to give kids something to do, but to help bend the arc of their future toward success. More on that tomorrow after the press conference actually takes place, but in the meantime I had a chance to talk to U.S. Deputy Secretary of Labor Chris Lu, who will be joining the mayor at tomorrow’s press conference as a show of support.
“This has been part of a broader commitment by the Obama administration around the country to increase summer jobs,” he said.
That’s good to know. But what really caught my attention was the results of a 2014 study performed by a University of Pennsylvania professor that tracked the results of a summer youth employment program in Chicago that focused on young people who were basically living their lives as a balancing act on a razor’s edge between survival and the point of no return. Lu referenced this study as a strong indicator of why summer youth employment matters, and once I took a look at the study I could see why. A summer job can change a kid’s life.
From Chicagomag.com
“A recent study, reminiscent of the Becoming a Man study—and by the same lead author, the University of Pennsylvania’s Sara Heller—brings very positive findings: a 43 percent reduction in violent crime among disadvantaged high school youth over a 16-month span, well after the skills program ended. And it suggests that there are different, equally effective routes to imparting those skills.
“Heller’s study, recently published in Science, examined One Summer Plus, a summer-jobs program open to students in high-violence Chicago public high schools. On average, the kids were 16 going on 17, with a C average, and having missed 29 days of school. Twenty-two percent had been arrested. In short, not lost kids, but “on the cusp,” to use Heller’s words.
“They were put through a straightforward summer jobs program: students got paid minimum wage to work engaging jobs—camp counselor, aldermanic assistant, community-garden work—with the assistance of a job mentor. In other words, it’s not just digging a hole to fill it back in.”
And from the study itself:
Abstract
Every day, acts of violence injure more than 6000 people in the United States. Despite decades of social science arguing that joblessness among disadvantaged youth is a key cause of violent offending, programs to remedy youth unemployment do not consistently reduce delinquency. This study tests whether summer jobs, which shift focus from remediation to prevention, can reduce crime. In a randomized controlled trial among 1634 disadvantaged high school youth in Chicago, assignment to a summer jobs program decreases violence by 43% over 16 months (3.95 fewer violent-crime arrests per 100 youth). The decline occurs largely after the 8-week intervention ends. The results suggest the promise of using low-cost, well-targeted programs to generate meaningful behavioral change, even with a problem as complex as youth violence.
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