An Outcome Study: NLSY79

Abstract

Relying on NLSY79National Longitudinal Survey of YouthNLSY79 respondents who participated in every survey year between 1979 and 2006, this chapter explores the educational and economic outcomes of maturing youth who enrolled in any one of several government training programs through 1986. Government training programs included apprenticeship, Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA), Job Corps, Manpower Development and Training Act (MDTA), Opportunities Industrial Centers (OIC), Service Employment Redevelopment (SER), Jobs for Progress, Urban League, Vocational Rehabilitation, among others. The chapter also compares the educational and economic outcomes of these government-sponsored training program enrollees, who were primarily from low-income families, to those who participated in more traditional school-related vocational education programs over the same period as well as those who participated in neither of these two major types of job training initiatives. Outcome measures including highest grade completed, number of years of schooling, family income, hours worked per week, and individual wages are examined from 1988 by which time the vast majority of the cohort had completed most if not all of their formal education, through 2006, the most recent year of available NLSY79National Longitudinal Survey of YouthNLSY79 data at the time of the study.