Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Many major US cities, including Boston, have implemented Summer Youth Employment Programs (SYEPs) with the hope of improving various behavioral, academic, and economic outcomes among program participants, particularly inner-city, low-income, and non-white youth. Since its inception in the mid-1990s, the Boston Summer Youth Employment Program (SYEP) has grown into a national model that relies on city, state, and private funding of nearly $10 million a year to employ about 10,000 city teens each summer with hundreds of local employers. This study presents survey results assessing the improvements in short-term outcomes for the Boston SYEP using data collected for both treatment and control groups from the summers of 2015, 2016, and 2017. The Boston SYEP was found to improve a variety of reported outcomes, including significant increases in job readiness skills, financial literacy, community engagement, and college aspirations that were significantly different from the control group. In most cases, the largest gains were observed for minority youth suggesting that the program may have the capacity to reduce inequality across groups. We then discuss lessons that can be learned and applied by others who look to conduct program evaluations of comparable youth populations for workforce development programs. These lessons cover topics including question design, topic inclusion, sampling and improving response rates, and expanding data collection.