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the paper is about the Summer Youth
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Employment Program in New York City uh
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we have data from 2005 to 2008 and one
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of the nice things about the program is
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that applicants who apply get lotteri in
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to have access to a summer job this is
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great for research purposes because we
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can compare basically identical people
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uh one of whom happened to get access to
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a summer job and one of whom did not uh
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and we can follow them uh from the year
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that they participate or don't
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participate uh up through 2014 and we
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match the data from the Summer Youth
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Employment Program with tax data IRS
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administrative data uh and data from the
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a New York State uh Department of
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Corrections and Community Supervision
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we're able to see the outcomes both for
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earnings College enrollment
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incarceration and mortality for the
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Youth who participate and who do not
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so there's three rationals to have
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summer youth employment programs and
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many cities have these uh New York the
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one we analyzes the biggest one in the
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country um but the three rationals that
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people give one you want to give youth a
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leg up uh give them better access to
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jobs in the future uh the second one is
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that um you want to transfer money
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directly to youth in the year of the
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program so basically put money into the
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hands of low-income kids and the third
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is that you want to keep you out of
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trouble and putting them in a job uh
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might might help that so we analyze uh
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the data to see if we could answer is
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the program doing each of accomplishing
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each of these three goals and the
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takeaways are it certainly is
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transferring money to low-income youth
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because in the year of the program the
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people who get access to the jobs earn
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significantly more than people who don't
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so it's it's not as if the program is
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giving jobs to people who would have
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gotten jobs otherwise the second uh
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rationale that we're putting youth on a
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better path so that they can earn more
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money in the future we actually don't
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find any evidence of that in the 3 years
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following the program the youth earn a
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little bit less if they had participated
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in the program so we investigate that uh
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in a little greater detail because it
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was a little bit surprising to us um and
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basically we find that what what matters
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is what job they get placed in in the
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summer of the program because the job
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that they take in that summer that they
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get in that summer tends to be sticky
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they take similar jobs like that so the
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youth who end up being Camp counselors
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or working in daycare centers they tend
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to gravitate towards those kinds of jobs
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in the future and those jobs uh on
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average earn a little bit less than
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other jobs we find no evidence that the
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summer job lets them or uh helps them go
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to college at higher rates so we don't
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see any effect on College enrollment um
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but by the fourth year after the program
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they're earning the same as the people
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uh who did not participate um so we
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don't find great evidence on helping
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them uh earn more money later on but we
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find very strong effects uh on keeping
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the youth out of trouble and we actually
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find that the youth who get lottery into
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to participate are more likely to be
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alive in 2014 and less likely to be
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incarcerated in New York state
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prison so one of the most surprising
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things for us was uh the mortality and
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incarceration results because that was
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something that we were able to analyze
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because we had so many youth applying
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over the course of four years and we
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could follow them for a long time other
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papers that study similar programs
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hadn't been able to look at so many
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people for so long uh so we were
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particularly surprised about the
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mortality results that in essence the
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program saved about 20 lives per year
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over the four years that we studied um
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that turns out to be quite important
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when you think about is the program uh
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are the social costs of the program and
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the social benefits of the program how
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do how do we compare those uh because
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when you save lives there's lots of
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value uh social value that you're
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creating uh from the
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program the great thing about this
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project is that it is the real world uh
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the youth uh that these programs exist
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in New York City and and cities across
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the country and so the results of the
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paper I think
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help give a sense of of what the
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programs are actually achieving and
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maybe you know should they be expanded
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which groups should they Target in the
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paper we go through and show the
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mortality incarceration and earnings
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results for different subgroups maybe
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it's worth uh targeting the programs or
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trying to reach out to youth uh For Whom
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the benefits are are
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greater when people think about the
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summer youth employment programs that
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exist they often think that the main
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contribution of the programs is helping
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people get jobs uh one of the things
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that we find that's that was so
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surprising to us is that in fact a lot
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of the benefits acrew on these other
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dimensions of keeping youth out of
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trouble uh keep putting them on a safer
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path so they uh might have a different
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group of friends because they
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participated in the program and those
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friends might
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uh keep them out of trouble and and keep
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them alive uh and so thinking about all
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the ways in which the summer youth
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employment programs can help uh these
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youth is something that people policy
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makers and others should keep in
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mind one of the nice things about the uh
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data that we have to analyze is just how
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many people we're able to look at so we
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actually are following 200,000 Unique
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Individuals uh do submitting 300,000
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applications some people apply in
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multiple years and having so much data
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allows us to talk about very rare
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outcomes like mortality which thankfully
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is quite low in this population but it
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allows us to make statistical uh claims
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about the lowering of the mortality risk
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from people who participate in the
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program we're following up on this paper
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with uh trying to better understand the
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incarceration results and uh merging in
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data on uh arrests and convictions in
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New York state to try to get a better
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sense of what's driving that effect
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there's also lots of other summer youth
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employment programs across the country
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and one of the things that's on the
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horizon is helping other cities identify
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the strengths and weaknesses of their
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programs by doing similar evaluations uh
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on what is happening to the youth that
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get to participate in in their City's
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Summer Youth Employment Program
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