July 2025 North America Newsletter

As teenagers become more independent and begin to make decisions about how to continue their education or enter the workforce, the opportunities and support available during this time can influence their long-term trajectories, both positively and negatively. For example, teenagers who have access to early employment experiences are more likely to earn more later in life whereas those who have contact with the juvenile justice system are more likely to be incarcerated as adults. Summer Youth Employment Programs (SYEP), or jurisdictional programs that provide 14–24 year olds with paid employment over the summer, have been shown by rigorous research across multiple cities to be a cost-effective way of improving a wide range of criminal justice, academic, and employment outcomes for youth. 

I have three boys, all of whom are now legal adults and gainfully employed—one of them living entirely on his own. But, looking back to their early teenage years, it wasn't always clear that they were on the path toward self-sufficiency. What changed? Summer job experiences yielded a marked improvement for them. Since then, my research lab has successfully engaged in a ten year partnership with the Boston Office of Workforce Development that has yielded robust evidence on the impacts of summer jobs, led to improvements in program efficiency and equity, large increases in funding, and a Mayor’s Youth Jobs Guarantee. 

Currently, roughly thirty cities across the United States administer summer jobs programs. I believe this number, and the impact of existing programs, could be even greater. However, implementing summer jobs programs is challenging due to their complex coordination and the need to tailor the intervention to the population being served, the participating employer partners, and the available funding. Working with my colleagues at Northeastern University's Community to Community Impact Engine and partners at J-PAL North America, the Brookings Institution, and Arnold Ventures, I recently published a research-informed manual to share deep insights from our past decade of work in overcoming these challenges. The goal of this manual is to reduce learning curves, ensure high quality summer jobs programs, and provide a roadmap to bring these programs to scale.

This manual is a first step in introducing an evidence-based model for SYEPs that can be replicated across other cities and adapted to different local contexts and community needs. Over the next year, we will build an SYEP microsite to share more resources, collect feedback, and develop a virtual community of practice for stakeholders (e.g., city leaders, school districts, nonprofits, workforce development organizations, and employers). We encourage anyone currently administering or interested in starting a summer jobs program to read the manual and share your feedback so that this can be a living resource that is responsive to community needs. I look forward to learning from other dedicated youth advocates as we collectively work toward improving the lives of our youth.

Sincerely,

Alicia Sasser Modestino

Associate Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs and Economics, Northeastern University | J-PAL North America Affiliated Researcher

New research-informed manual facilitates summer youth employment scaling efforts

Summer Youth Employment Programs represent a major tool for policymakers to help youth access positive early employment experiences. Rigorous research has found that summer jobs raise employment rates, reduce arrests and entanglement with the criminal justice system, and can improve a range of educational and youth development outcomes. Yet these programs can also be complex to launch and manage. Building Opportunity: A Research-Informed Manual for Summer Youth Employment aims to ensure practitioners have the resources they need to successfully scale this evidence-based program.

Opinion: Null results from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment are being misinterpreted 

Amid current policy debates on Medicaid, many have misrepresented the null results of the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment (OHIE) as evidence that Medicaid has no impact on mortality and physical health. In a new opinion piece in StatNews, Amy Finkelstein, J-PAL North America’s Co-Scientific Director and investigator on the OHIE, dives deeper into the study’s null results and demonstrates how no evidence of impact is not the same as evidence of no impact. Read more »

New research results: Effect of salary history disclosure on employer demand for workers

In a new audit study, J-PAL affiliated professors Amanda Agan (Cornell) and Laura Gee (Tufts), with coauthor Bo Cowgill (Columbia), randomized whether or not fictitious male and female candidates disclosed their salary history on a job application. They found that, for both men and women, higher salary disclosures resulted in higher salary offers and increased recruiter perception that the candidate had better outside options. This suggests that it is beneficial for job applicants with high salary histories to disclose them on a job application. Read more about the results »

Featured Evaluation Summary

The impact of unconditional cash transfers on health outcomes in the United States

Individuals with low incomes have worse health outcomes than higher-income individuals. To test whether increasing income can improve health, researchers evaluated the impact of a three year $1,000 monthly unconditional cash transfer to individuals with low incomes on health outcomes including nutrition, sleep, health care access and use, and physical and mental health. Participants who received the cash transfers had higher medical expenditures, emergency department and hospital use, and short-term improvements in stress and food security, but experienced no change in sleep quality, exercise frequency, self-reported access to health care, and physical health. Read the summary »

Featured Event

From Evidence to Action: Replicating Effective Homelessness Prevention Across Communities

On August 28, join J-PAL North America Co-Executive Director Vincent Quan for a conversation on moving from evidence to impact in homelessness prevention, part of Evidence Matters, an ongoing collaboration with King County and the Lab for Economic Opportunities. As housing insecurity rises and budgets are strained, it’s critical to act on what works to prevent homelessness. But every community is different, and it can be difficult to know how to take a proven solution from one community and make it work in another. Panelists David Phillips (Notre Dame), Chad Boroquez (Destination : Home), Jessica Orozco (Santa Clara County OSH), and Alyson Moon (Mary’s Place) will share lessons from their own work and discuss how local governments can replicate and scale evidence-based models in their own communities utilizing the Homelessness Prevention System Toolkit. Register here!