Six-to-One Social Benefit-to-Cost Efficiency in Youth Employment

In Simple Words

Subsidizing temporary summer jobs functions like buying a low-cost security lock that prevents thousands of dollars in emergency hospital visits and property damage down the road. By spending a modest amount upfront per youth, cities save vastly larger sums in avoided criminal justice processing, victim injuries, and long-term incarceration.

Research question

Municipal youth violence prevention initiatives often require massive public expenditures on intensive programs whose economic costs exceed their measurable societal benefits. High fiscal burdens limit the scalability of public safety interventions in resource-constrained urban centers.

Participants

Chicago OSC+ program cohorts (5,216 youth ages 16–22) and NYC SYEP program (>30,000 youth per year across 2005–2008 cohorts; baseline neighborhood poverty >33%, >90% free lunch).

Study Design

Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) evaluating monetized societal benefits of reduced violent crime arrests against per-participant program costs.

Results

Social benefits from violent crime reduction in OSC+ were estimated to be nearly six times larger than program costs (~6:1 benefit-cost ratio). SYEP cost per participant was ~$1,400 ($1,463 in 2017 dollars), producing substantial overall reductions in incarceration and premature deaths at a fraction of alternative program costs.

Takeaway

Allocate municipal public safety funds toward low-cost subsidized summer job lotteries to maximize monetized societal return on investment.

Read alongside the research

Plain-English glossary

Original explanations, informed by the references below. Examples are illustrations, not data from the studies above. The research text stays unchanged.

Baseline

The starting measurements in a study. Researchers use these to compare what participants were like at the start with what happens later.

ExampleBefore a training programme starts, researchers measure workers’ earnings. That first measurement is the baseline.

GET-IT glossary · Baseline characteristics ↗Read more about baseline →

Randomized controlled trial

A study that uses chance, like drawing lots, to decide who receives each option being compared. Researchers compare the groups’ outcomes to estimate the effect of those options.

ExampleA lottery assigns volunteers to a training programme or a comparison group. Researchers then compare their outcomes.

GET-IT glossary · Randomized study ↗Read more about randomized controlled trial →

Related findings

• Fiscal Return on Active Labor Market Policies →Policy & public sector

  Think of investing in a software tool that costs $50 to speed up an employee's work so well that it saves $60 in payroll costs, compared to paying an outside contractor $300 for the same task without saving any payroll time at all.

• Public Cost-Benefit Valuation of Policy Regimes →Policy & public sector

  Evaluating a company's safety equipment requires weighing the upfront purchase cost against prevented accident expenses and increased worker productivity, calculating the net money saved across the entire organization.

• Social Cost-Benefit Asymmetry in Youth Crime Prevention →Policy & public sector

  Think of buying high-tech security guards for two different buildings: placing them in a bank prevents multi-million dollar robberies and pays for itself immediately, whereas placing them in an empty park saves virtually no money because no valuable crimes were going to happen there anyway.

• Administrative Exclusion of Inactive Work Scheme Beneficiaries →Policy & public sector

  This is like upgrading a school communications portal but sending setup instructions only to students currently sitting in class today. Former students who stepped away temporarily are left completely out of the loop and face steep hurdles attempting to re-enroll.