Youth Opportunities Programme Research Articles

A Bayesian framework for estimating human capabilities

Abstract The capabilities approach provides a rich framework for welfare assessment, but its practical relevance is limited by methodological difficulties associated with the measurement of human capabilities. We argue that, unlike existing approaches to capability estimation, Bayesian stochastic frontier analysis (BSFA) is consistent with the key features of the capabilities approach and thus provides a natural framework for estimating capabilities. Using simulated data, we show that BSFA outperforms the leading alternatives (e.g., structural equation models) in comparable settings. We further show that our approach is more flexible than the alternatives: BSFA can provide cardinal representations of entire capability sets and can be used with continuous, discrete, and multivariate outcomes. Finally, we provide an empirical illustration of our estimator by examining the impact of Uganda’s Youth Opportunities Program on the educational capabilities of children in the treated households.

A Bayesian Framework for Estimating Human Capabilities

The capabilities approach provides a rich framework for welfare assessment, but its practical relevance is limited by methodological difficulties associated with the measurement of human capabilities. We argue that, unlike existing approaches to capability estimation, Bayesian stochastic frontier analysis (BSFA) is consistent with the key features of the capabilities approach and thus provides a natural framework for estimating capabilities. Using simulated data, we show that BSFA outperforms the leading alternatives (e.g., structural equation models) in comparable settings. We further show that our approach is more flexible than the alternatives: BSFA can provide cardinal representations of entire capability sets and can be used with continuous, discrete, and multivariate outcomes. Finally, we provide an empirical illustration of our estimator by examining the impact of Uganda’s Youth Opportunities Program on the educational capabilities of children in the treated households.

The Long-Term Impacts of Grants on Poverty: Nine-Year Evidence from Uganda’s Youth Opportunities Program

In 2008, Uganda gave $400 per person to thousands of young people to help them start skilled trades, work more, and raise incomes. Four years on, an experimental evaluation found grants raised work by 17 percent and earnings by 38 percent (Blattman, Fiala, Martinez 2014). After nine years, we find these gains have dissipated. Grantees’ investment leveled off; controls eventually increased their incomes through business and casual labor; and so both groups converged in employment, earnings, and consumption levels. We see little effect on mortality, fertility, or family health and education. However, grants had lasting impacts on durable asset stocks and skilled work. (JEL H53, I32, I38, O15, O22)

The Long Term Impacts of Grants on Poverty: 9-Year Evidence from Uganda's Youth Opportunities Program

There is growing enthusiasm for cash grants as a tool to tackle poverty globally, but we have little sense whether the promising short-run impacts persist in the long term. In 2008, Uganda gave $400/person to thousands of young people, to help them start skilled trades. Four years on, an experimental evaluation found grants raised earnings by 38% (Blattman, Fiala, Martinez 2014). We return after 9 years to find these start-up grants raised earnings and consumption temporarily only. Grantees’ investment leveled off; controls eventually increased their incomes through business and casual labor; and so both groups converged in employment, earnings, and consumption. Grants had lasting impacts on assets, skilled work, and possibly child health, but had little effect on mortality, fertility, health or education.

The experiences of alumni adolescents on the contribution of a Youth Opportunities Programme

This article focuses on the experiences of alumni adolescents on the contribution of a Youth Opportunities Programme, a non-profit after-school education programme presented in Namibia. A qualitative descriptive design was used to provide insight into the contribution of this programme. Five focus groups were conducted with 32 participants. The transcribed data were analysed by means of thematic analysis. The rich descriptions of the experiences of alumni adolescents indicated learning, personal and relational experiences as well as challenges. The learning experiences included the transfer of academic knowledge and skills that assisted them to deal with advanced opportunities, and the provision of resources. They were able to socialise with friends and form personal relationships with teachers, serving as emotional support. The challenges they encountered while attending the programme on a full-time basis included high expectations in terms of time management, attendance and behaviour. These challenges proved to be exhausting at times. Keywords : academic improvement, adolescents, after-school programme, development, extracurricular activities, life skills

Employment Generation in Rural Africa: Mid-Term Results from an Experimental Evaluation of the Youth Opportunities Program in Northern Uganda

Can cash transfers promote employment and reduce poverty in rural Africa? Will lower youth unemployment and poverty reduce the risk of social instability? We experimentally evaluate one of Uganda's largest development programs, which provided thousands of young people nearly unconditional, unsupervised cash transfers to pay for vocational training, tools, and business start-up costs. Mid-term results after two years suggest four main findings. First, despite a lack of central monitoring and accountability, most youth invest the transfer in vocational skills and tools. Second, the economic impacts of the transfer are large: hours of nonhousehold employment double and cash earnings increase by nearly 50% relative to the control group. We estimate the transfer yields a real annual return on capital of 35% on average. Third, the evidence suggests that poor access to credit is a major reason youth cannot start these vocations in the absence of aid. Much of the heterogeneity in impacts is unexplained, however, and is unrelated to conventional economic measures of ability, suggesting we have much to learn about the determinants of entrepreneurship. Finally, these economic gains result in modest improvements in social stability. Measures of social cohesion and community support improve mildly, by roughly 5 to 10%, especially among males, most likely because the youth becomes a net giver rather than a net taker in his kin and community network. Most strikingly, we see a 50% fall in interpersonal aggression and disputes among males, but a 50% increase among females. Neither change seems related to economic performance nor does social cohesion - a puzzle to be explored in the next phase of the study. These results suggest that increasing access to credit and capital could stimulate employment growth in rural Africa. In particular, unconditional and unsupervised cash transfers may be a more effective and cost-efficient form of large-scale aid than commonly believed. A second stage of data collection in 2012 will collect longitudinal economic impacts, additional data on political violence and behavior, and explore alternative theoretical mechanisms.

The Careers Service: Threatened by Youth Unemployment ‐‐ Saved by Youth Training

Abstract The modern careers service has its origins in the post‐war world of full employment. Unlike its inter‐war counterpart, which concentrated on finding jobs for young people, the post‐war service has been preoccupied with giving them vocational guidance. With a professional rationale resting on an assumption of genuine occupational choice for young people, high unemployment could have generated serious professional challenges to those occupationally socialised during a period of full employment Yet most of the careers officers interviewed in a Midlands conurbation maintained that though their day‐to‐day work had changed and become more difficult, their professional role, far from being diminished, had been unchanged or even extended by high unemployment. It would seem that they, like their clients, had been ‘rescued’ from unemployment by YTS. 1 1. The Youth Training Scheme (YTS) was introduced in 1983 as a replacement for the Youth Opportunities Programme. One key element in the new scheme was that on‐the‐job training had to be complemented by the equivalent of 13 weeks off‐the‐job training. Initially, schemes lasted for one year. However, in 1985 it was announced that in future they were to be two years in duration. In 1990, YTS gave way to Youth Training (YT). Under YT, only those training providers who offered courses leading to at least National Vocational Qualification Level II or its equivalent would be able to run schemes. The newly created TECs were to be responsible for ensuring the quality of the training.

An empirical analysis of the unemployment duration of school-leavers

Unemployment is a waste of vaulable human resources, which also imposes various economics, medical and psychological costs on the individual. These costs are likely to be greater the longer the duration of umemployment. This is true for both prime-aged workers and the youngest entrants to the labour market, that is, school-leavers. Using Careers Service data on 1979, 1980 and 1981 leavers, the authors seek to shed light on the issue of what factors determine the duration of unemployment for minimum-aged school-leavers. The way in which these factors can be used by the Careers Service to identify those school-leavers who have a higher risk of long-term unemployment is discussed and a number of strategies for helping this group are outlined. The results show that, after allowing for the distorting influence of the Youth Opportunities Programme, longer durations of unemployment are associated with an absence of work experience, low-to-intermediate qualifications and other personality traits.

SCHOOL LEAVERS AND THE SEARCH FOR EMPLOYMENT

among explanations of the current high level of youth un-employment has been the concern that the wage expectations of youngpeople are out of line with what the market can pay for their particular typeof labour. Indeed, through various policy measures, such as the upperearnings limits on both the Young Workers Scheme and the New WorkersScheme, and the relatively low training allowances paid to participants onboth the Youth Opportunities Programme (YOP) and Youth TrainingScheme (YTS), the government can be seen to have made efforts to holddown both youth wages and young people's wage expectations.

SCHOOL-LEAVER UNEMPLOYMENT AND THE YOUTH OPPORTUNITIES PROGRAMME IN SCOTLAND

Journal Article SCHOOL-LEAVER UNEMPLOYMENT AND THE YOUTH OPPORTUNITIES PROGRAMME IN SCOTLAND Get access BRIAN G. M. MAIN BRIAN G. M. MAIN University of EdinburghU.K. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Oxford Economic Papers, Volume 37, Issue 3, September 1985, Pages 426–447, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.oep.a041700 Published: 01 September 1985

The Corporate Response to YTS — Part I:

Youth unemployment is one of the most serious problems of the early 1980s. In 1981 one in six youngsters under 18 years old were looking for jobs. As the problem has worsened the emphasis of public programmes has shifted from attempts to reduce the level of unemployment to the provision of training alternatives to employment, such as the Youth Opportunities Programme (YOP) and the Youth Training Scheme (YTS). At present, the Government is committed to employer‐based, on‐the‐job training for school leavers.

The Psychological Effects of Unemployment on a Group of Adolescents

Abstract Many psychologists and psychiatrists have described the effects of unemployment upon the morale and self‐esteem of the individual. This investigation focused on adolescents: three groups were selected for study. One group consisted of boys and girls who had been in paid employment since they left school. The second group consisted of boys and girls who had experienced unemployment, but were involved in a Youth Opportunities Programme or Y.O.P. course. The third group consisted of boys and girls who had been mainly unemployed since leaving school. There were 50 adolescents in each group, and groups consisted of an equal number of boys and girls. The groups were administered two self‐esteem inventories, the Goldberg General Health Questionnaire, and the Rosenberg Depression Scale. Results from the four indices showed that the unemployed adolescents suffered from lower self‐esteem, experienced a greater number of psychosomatic symptons, and felt more unhappy. The most psychologically ‘healthy’ group were the employed, but adolescents on the Y.O.P. course seemed much less affected by the experience of unemployment than the totally unemployed group. Interviews with selected adolescents from the three groups supported the main findings. It is suggested that the psychological effects of unemployment may be greatly mitigated if adolescents follow a course of training which can create a framework for their lives.

FEU and MSC: Two curricular philosophies and their implications for the youth training scheme

Abstract Although the Manpower Services Commission (MSC) and the Further Education Unit (FEU) seek to present a united front on the curriculum they would like to see in the Youth Training Scheme, their philosophies in fact differ. MSC is concerned to limit further education to a support role in YTS and is critical of much of FE's provision under the Youth Opportunities Programme. FEU is conducting something of a rearguard action on behalf of the colleges. FEU's allowance for trainees' rights, embodied in such ideas as negotiation, profiling and trainee-centred reviewing is not matched by MSC. In the past MSC's view of Social and Life Skills has similarly differed from that of FEU, and FEU is struggling to have its ideas included in the body of curricular theory emerging from the Institute of Manpower Studies that is currently central to MSC thinking on the curriculum. It seems likely that the conflict between the two organizations will be resolved partly by their having separate spheres of influence in YT...

The ‘Transition from School to Work’ in 1980/81: a dynamic account

AbstractThis paper describes the experiences of a sample of Scottish school leavers during their first year in the labour market in 1980 and 1981. The paper describes the absorption of summer term leavers into the labour market and their movements between employment, unemployment and the Youth Opportunities Programme (YOP). The summer months continued to be the main recruitment season for school leavers; after October few school leavers found employment without first going on YOP. Yet a majority of entrants to YOP did not find work at the end of their schemes, and YOP had become a major ingredient of a new pattern of instability in the youth labour market. School leavers' chances of employment varied with their school qualifications and with the area they lived in. The paper concludes with a discussion of the Youth Training Scheme, which comes into operation in September 1983.

YOP in perspective

In September 1978 the Government, through the Manpower Services Commission (MSC), launched the Youth Opportunities Programme (YOP). The programme was introduced to offset growing unemployment among the young, and aimed at providing them with good quality training and work experience. One of its major objectives was to improve their prospects of permanent employment.

Careers:

A new report Experience is not enough, produced by the National Institute for Careers Education and Counselling and published by the Manpower Services Commission, is critical of training provision made available to adult staff employed through the Youth Opportunities Programme. The report is based on a review of training relevant to the guidance and support role of YOP staff. Among the provisions covered is the caring/guidance component of the City & Guilds 926 Award, courses tutored by MSC staff, and courses provided by organisations like the Counselling & Career Development Unit (CCDU), National Association for the Care & Resettlement of Offenders (NACRO), and NICEC itself. The existing situation is criticised as being very patchy, with the degree of provision varying greatly from one geographical region to another. Of particular concern is the almost total non‐involvement of staff working on WEEP schemes. Principal points to emerge are:

The Reconstruction of Post-Compulsory Education and Training in England and Wales

Britain has been unusually late in planning any extensive 'third stage' of education beyond the period of compulsory schooling. In practice if not in precept, it seemed to be sufficient to 'educate' an elite in sixth forms, to 'prepare' or 'train' further minorities for technical and white-collar employment, and to leave the majority of young workers to pick up what skills they needed as they went along. The outcome is one of the least-trained workforces in the industrial world (Manpower Services Commission, 1982a, p. 2). The source of that criticism, the Manpower Services Commission (MSC), has itself organised a rapid extension of 'training opportunities', an extension in which local education authorities and the Department of Education and Science (DES) have played only subordinate parts. After years of tinkering with such internal problems as the appropriate curriculum for 'non-academic' sixth formers, the education sector has had to consider a more radical reconstruction of 16-19 provision alongside the hectic activity of a government training agency linked firmly to the Department of Employment (DOE). As falling rolls have coincided with a real decrease in the money available to most local education authorities, so the blurring of traditionally well-defended boundaries between secondary and further education has seemed to promise a more financially 'rational' use of scarce resources. But the more significant boundary has been between those at 16 plus who are retained somewhere in the education system, and the majority who sever all connection with it as soon as they can (Holland, 1979). This has been cited to justify looking elsewhere for the educated, better trained and more adaptable workforce which new technology demands (DOE 1981, p. 4). Yet the main force behind the MSC's Youth Opportunities Programme (YOP) was the growing social and political problem of youth unemployment. What began in 1978 as a programme of vocational preparation and work experience for some 220,000 unemployed school leavers enlisted its millionth 'trainee' in September 1981, now covers half of all those who left school in 1982, and has a target of 630,000 entrants for 1982-83 (MSC, 1982b). What began as a set of emergency measures for five years is tO grow in 1983 into a £1 billion a year Youth Training Scheme intended to guarantee a year's 'foundation training' to all unemployed minimum-age school leavers, while also extending the vocational provision for those who find work (DOE, 1981; MSC, 1981a, 1981b, and 1982a). While the DES is bound to insist on the 'important contributions' to be made to the Scheme from 'the education system', it acknowledges at least implicitly that it is following a 'largely employment-based approach' which it has done little to shape (DES, 1982a).

Endeavour Training in Scotland

So went a recent conversation with a 16‐year‐old trainee from a Glasgow‐based Youth Opportunities Programme project — the Manpower Services Commission training scheme for unemployed teenagers, who are now using our facilities, among others, for residential experience. The activity was an abseil and the problem was to encourage her to become involved.

Careers:

School‐leavers often find themselves ill‐equipped to deal with the new financial responsibilities which follow. Money — The Facts of Life has therefore been written by W. Reay Tolfree to provide an easy source of reference on the economics of daily life. It is published by Martin Books of Cambridge in association with Lloyds Bank. The book has already become well established as a useful basic money guide covering such topics as payslips and how to understand them, taxation, insurance, savings, supplementary benefits, opening a bank account, getting a mortgage, running a car, and budgeting for holidays. There is also a practical section on qualifying for work, including details of the Youth Opportunities Programme, the Job Search Scheme, and the Community Enterprise Programme. For this seventh edition, the book has again been updated to include all the latest available figures and the changes suggested in the 1982 Budget proposals.

Careers:

Over 630,000 places would have to be found for unemployed school leavers and young people in the Youth Opportunities Programme in 1982/83 — an increase of 80,000 over the past year — according to Sir Richard O'Brien, Chairman of the Manpower Services Commission: