Bhanot Syon, Heller Sara B
Swarthmore College.
University of Michigan & NBER.
J Behav Public Adm. 2022;5(1). doi: 10.30636/jbpa.51.300. Epub 2022 Aug 31.
Administrative burden can reduce the effectiveness of public social programs by deterring take up among adults, but we know little about the role these burdens play in public programs for young people. This paper uses empirical evidence to assess how different barriers shape adolescents' take-up of summer jobs programs. In a Philadelphia experiment, we find that reminder emails increased application completion by 1.3 percentage points (8.8 percent (p=0.14)), with suggestively larger effects coming from reminders emphasizing short-term monetary gains. In a non-experimental analysis of Philadelphia and Chicago programs, we further show that without individualized support during enrollment, disconnected youth are less likely to participate when offered a slot than their more advantaged peers. However, offering personalized outreach and paperwork support during enrollment makes them as or more likely to participate. Given other evidence that more disconnected youth experience larger program benefits, these findings suggest administrative burden does constrain the benefits of public spending on youth programs, and that reducing burden can increase gains from social programs for young people.
行政负担可能会因阻碍成年人参与而降低公共社会项目的有效性，但我们对这些负担在针对年轻人的公共项目中所起的作用知之甚少。本文利用实证证据来评估不同障碍如何影响青少年参与暑期工作项目。在费城的一项实验中，我们发现提醒邮件使申请完成率提高了1.3个百分点（8.8%，p = 0.14），强调短期货币收益的提醒效果似乎更大。在对费城和芝加哥项目的非实验性分析中，我们进一步表明，在注册过程中如果没有个性化支持，与社会脱节的年轻人在获得参与机会时比条件更优越的同龄人参与的可能性更小。然而，在注册过程中提供个性化的宣传和文书工作支持会使他们参与的可能性与其他人一样或更高。鉴于其他证据表明，与社会联系更少的年轻人能从项目中获得更大的收益，这些发现表明行政负担确实会限制公共支出在青少年项目上的效益，减轻负担可以增加社会项目给年轻人带来的收益。
