Abstract
Poor young people more often face health difficulties, (learning) disabilities, and are overrepresented in special schools. Consequently, youth from poor households disproportionately frequently participate in disability‐specific programs aiming to improve their educational levels and labor market opportunities. They face a double burden of disability and poverty. In our study, we look at poor and non‐poor youth with disabilities (YPWD) who participate in vocational rehabilitation (VR) and whether VR helps them (a) in transitioning into employment and (b) in leaving poverty. We examine the association between the receipt of initial basic income support (BIS) as a poverty indicator, later labor market outcomes, and earned vocational qualification using administrative data. We make use of a sample of all persons accepted for VR in 2010 (N = 36,645). We employ logit models on VR attendees’ labor market outcomes three and five years after being accepted for VR as well as on their earned vocational qualifications. Beside initial poverty status, we control for educational level, type, and degree of disability and program pattern during the VR process. Our findings show that YPWD from poor households have a decreased likelihood of a vocational certificate and employment. Additionally, they are more likely to receive BIS than young people not from poor households and thus more likely to remain poor. In conclusion, VR seems to support poor YPWD less in their school‐to‐work transitions. Thus, disability‐specific programs should be more tailored to the social situations of participants, and counsellors should be more sensitive to their social backgrounds.
Highlights
In Germany, 14% of all children under the age of 18 grow up in poor households
Our population of young people with disabili‐ ties (YPWD) beginning vocational rehabilitation (VR) in 2010 consists of more men than women and most of them were aged between 17 and 20 (Table 1). 35% came from house‐ holds receiving basic income support (BIS): 11% formed their own households and 24% lived with their parents
Observing the whole VR process, we see that 50% of the YPWD participated in prevocational training programs followed by vocational training, 24% partici‐ pated in prevocational training only, and 9% participated in vocational training only
Summary
Forty percent of poor young people under the age of 25 live for four years or more in poverty households (Statistik der Bundesagentur für Arbeit, 2021a, 2021c). First labor market experiences are meaningful for subsequent employment biography (Schmillen & Umkehrer, 2017) This applies to disadvantaged youth such as those with disabilities and those from poor families (Osgood et al, 2005). The school‐to‐work transi‐ tion (STWT) for those with disabilities from low‐income families is twice as challenging (Enayati & Karpur, 2018). This is relevant, as studies on the STWT often neglect persons with disabilities as a group. The rela‐ tively high proportion of young adults living in (parental) households receiving basic income support (BIS; 23% in 2020) is striking (Statistik der Bundesagentur für Arbeit, 2021b)
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