Helping Youth with Disabilities Enter the Workforce

Creating programs to help young people with disabilities make a successful transition from school to work is an important policy concern. Programs targeting youth ages 14 to 25 are more likely to be effective than those initiated at later stages, when an individual's expectations about disability and dependence are more entrenched. In addition, interventions that reduce average lifetime duration on the disability rolls could generate substantial savings for the federal government.

Mathematica was awarded a nine-year, $41 million contract from the Social Security Administration (SSA) to evaluate the Youth Transition Demonstration projects, designed to help youth with disabilities maximize their economic self-sufficiency as they move from school to work. To accomplish this goal, projects can provide benefits counseling, advocacy, career counseling, job placement, and services to support continued employment. A key element of the initiative is the waiving of certain rules by SSA to provide incentives for youth with disabilities to initiate work or increase their work activity. Twelve projects are currently operating across the country.

The projects work with youth ages 14 to 25 who receive Supplemental Security Income, Social Security Disability Insurance, or Childhood Disability Benefits, and those who are at risk of receiving these benefits after leaving school. The projects, which can coordinate with schools and existing service providers in their communities, have flexibility in the interventions they develop, the subgroups of youths they serve, and the services and supports they provide.

Mathematica will develop and evaluate the interventions, which are expected to reduce the likelihood participants will experience a lifetime of dependence on disability benefits. Working with its subcontractors MDRC, Cornell University, and TransCen, Inc., Mathematica will develop intervention strategies, market them to potential sponsors, assist sponsors in running projects, and select six projects to participate in a multiyear evaluation. The evaluation will be based on an experimental design. Outcomes for participating youth will be measured through administrative data sources and surveys conducted 12 and 36 months after they were randomly assigned to a treatment group, which will receive the SSA waivers and full project services, or a control group, which will be subject to all standard SSA rules and will receive only those services that they access independently of the demonstration projects.

Key components of the evaluation include a process study of project implementation, an impact study of the interventions for youth with disabilities, and a cost-benefit analysis.


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