Young Adults
Young adulthood involves a series of high-stakes transitions in education, work, and family arrangements. MDRC develops and evaluates programs to ease these transitions for young people and to assist those facing challenges and setbacks in finding a path to a stable adult life.
Issue Focus Population
Highlights
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Report
Building a Learning Agenda Around Disconnected Youth
Built on a research review and consultation with youth policy experts, this paper makes the case for developing a menu of approaches for the heterogeneous population of disconnected youth, building knowledge about mature programs (to better understand whether they work, for whom, and why), and creating new programs that address areas of unmet need. This framework may be particularly relevant for the Administration’s newly proposed Youth Innovation Fund.
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Report
Staying on Course
After three years, participants in National Guard Youth ChalleNGe, an intensive, “quasi-military” residential program for high school dropouts, are more likely than their control group counterparts to have obtained a GED or high school diploma, to have earned college credits, and to be working. Their earnings are also 20 percent higher.
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Report
Interim Report on Transition WORKS
The Youth Transition Demonstration, led by Mathematica Policy Research, MDRC, and TransCen, Inc., is developing and evaluating strategies to help youth with disabilities transition from school to work. While participants in the Erie County, NY, site were more likely to participate in self-sufficiency services, the program has had no impact on employment or school completion in its first year.
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Current Projects
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Completed Projects