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Final Report on the Youth Transition Demonstration Evaluation
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Final Report on the Youth Transition Demonstration Evaluation

Published: Nov 11, 2014
Publisher: Washington, DC: Mathematica Policy Research
Human Services Disability Transition to Adulthood Employment Youth Employment Analytics & Operations Research & Evaluation Surveys and Data Collection Technical Assistance Evaluation Design Policy Analysis

Associated Project

Youth Transition Demonstration: Helping Youth with Disabilities Become Employed

Time frame: 2005-2014

Prepared for:

Social Security Administration

Authors

Thomas Fraker

Arif Mamun

Todd Honeycutt

Allison Thompkins

Erin Jacobs Valentine

Key Findings

Key Findings:

  • Three of the six Youth Transition Demonstration (YTD) projects had positive and statistically significant impacts of approximately 7 percentage points on paid employment during the third year after youth enrolled in the evaluation.
  • Positive impacts on employment were concentrated among the YTD projects that delivered more hours of employment-focused services to higher proportions of treatment group youth.
  • Two of the YTD projects significantly reduced youth contact with the justice system during the third year after enrollment.
  • The YTD project in Miami-Dade County, Florida, had the most consistent statistically significant three-year impacts on youth across a range outcomes: increases in paid employment, earnings, and total income, and reduced contact with the justice system.

The Youth Transition Demonstration, an initiative of the Social Security Administration, provided employment services and enhanced work incentives to young people with severe disabilities in 10 research sites across the country. Mathematica’s evaluation of this initiative involved enrolling 5,103 youth from six of these sites into the study, randomly assigning them to treatment or control groups, and collecting baseline and follow-up data on the enrollees. The findings show that treatment group youth in three of the sites were about 7 percentage points more likely than their control group counterparts to have worked for pay during the third year after study enrollment. Those differences—the estimated impacts of the demonstration projects on youth in the three sites—are statistically significant.

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