About MDRC
Dai is a research associate at MDRC. She has 15 years of experience in SAS programming and has worked at MDRC for more than 10 years. She has processed various types of data at MDRC, including baseline, program-participation, unemployment-insurance-wage, administrative-record, survey, National Directory of New Hires, criminal-history-record, and medical-claim data. She has worked on multiple MDRC projects such as Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ, the Colorado Coordinated Care Program, the Youth Transition Demonstration, Youth Build, the CEO Replication, CII, the Enhanced Transitional Jobs Demonstration, the Subsidized and Transitional Employment Demonstration, the Summer Youth Employment Program, and PACE. Prior to joining MDRC, Dai worked in population studies and economic research at the East-West Center at Honolulu, Hawaii. She holds a master’s degree from the University of Hawaii, and earned a medical degree and practiced medicine in China.
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MDRC Publications
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Other Publications
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Projects
Megan Millenky, Lily Freedman, Caroline Mage, Douglas Phillips, Emily Brennan, Susan Scrivener, Viktoriya Syrov, Johanna Walter, Sally DaiIndividual Placement and Support ( IPS ) is an evidence-based model for delivering employment services originally developed for people with serious mental illness and implemented in community mental health settings. It has since gained interest as a strategy to promote employment for a variety of populations with mental health and substance use disorders seeking jobs....
Megan Millenky, Dan Bloom, Susan Scrivener, Charles Michalopoulos, Dina A. R. Israel, Johanna Walter, Lauren Cates, Sally Dai, Caroline Mage, Emily Marano, Viktoriya Syrov, Douglas Phillips, Kyla Wasserman, Lily Freedman, Osvaldo Avila, Emily Brennan, Jillian Verrillo, Gilda Azurdia, Frieda Molina, Shelley Rappaport, Clinton Key, Nandita Verma, Cynthia Miller, Jared Smith, Shawna Anderson, Kelsey Schaberg, Caitlin Anzelone, James A. Riccio, Keri West, Caroline Schultz, Ethan Feldman, Gabriel WeinbergerMany Americans struggle in the labor market even when overall economic conditions are good. Unemployment is persistently high for some demographic groups and in certain geographic areas, and a large proportion of working-age adults — about two in five in 2019 — tend to be out of the labor force. Factors such as systemic racism embedded in the economy and...
This MDRC study assesses the academic and labor market impacts of New York City’s Summer Youth Employment Program ( SYEP ), the nation’s largest summer jobs program for young people.
The federal government has greatly reduced its funding for summer job programs. These programs, however, have attracted increased attention in light of the unprecedented increase...
Megan Millenky, Jean Grossman, Louisa Treskon, Melanie Skemer, Sally Dai, Lily Freedman, Caroline MageYoung girls and women make up an increasing share of the youth in the juvenile justice system, despite a national decline in the overall rate of juvenile incarceration in this country. In 2011, girls made up nearly 30 percent of all juvenile arrests, up from 20 percent in 1980. However, girls account for a very small share of the juvenile arrests for violent crimes and...
Cynthia Miller, Dan Bloom, Dina A. R. Israel, Michelle S. Manno, John Martinez, Megan Millenky, Louisa Treskon, Sally Dai, Caroline Mage, Sharon RowserMaking the successful transition to adulthood had become increasingly challenging for disadvantaged young people. Two changes in the labor market have contributed to this trend. First, the rise in demand for higher skilled workers, while increasing the payoff to college, has resulted in declining real wages for less-educated workers. On top of this, youth are finding...
Some adults have great difficulty finding and holding jobs even when overall economic conditions are good. These individuals typically have low levels of formal education and skills and other characteristics, such as criminal records, that place them at the back of the queue for job openings. Many programs have been developed to assist these job seekers, but few have...
Dan Bloom, Richard Hendra, Melanie Skemer, David Navarro, Sally Dai, Kyla Wasserman, Jillian Verrillo, Chloe Anderson GolubOver the past 80 years, a variety of subsidized employment strategies have been used for two main purposes: (1) to provide work-based income support for people who are not able to find regular, unsubsidized jobs; and (2) to improve the employability of disadvantaged groups. Programs with the first goal have typically emerged during periods of sustained high...
In April 2005, approximately 776,000 young people with disabilities between the ages of 14 and 25 were receiving federal Supplemental Security Income benefits. Individuals who began receiving these benefits before age 18 were expected to stay on the disability rolls for an average of 27 years. Programs that could help young people with disabilities make a successful...
Despite skyrocketing health care spending, many people in the United States do not receive the health care they need. In addition to the tens of millions of Americans who lack health insurance, those with insurance often get inadequate care because the fractured American health care system makes it difficult for individuals to make appropriate health care choices. Lack...
Dan Bloom, Lauren Cates, JoAnn Hsueh, Dina A. R. Israel, Charles Michalopoulos, Johanna Walter, Sally Dai, Ximena PortillaFueled by a strong economy and passage of the 1996 federal welfare law, which imposed new work requirements and time limits on cash benefits, welfare caseloads declined precipitously during the 1990s. Between 1993 and 2000, the number of families on welfare dropped 56 percent nationally, with individual states experiencing reductions ranging from 20 percent to more...