Coaching Disadvantaged Young People: Evidence from Firm Level Data

Abstract

Abstract:In Germany, apprenticeship training firms currently face a shrinking number of qualified school-leavers because of smaller birth cohorts and an increasing proportion of school leavers aiming for higher education. This paper investigates whether a programme that supports firms to train disadvantaged youth can reduce recruiting difficulties in apprentice training firms. Based on unique firm-level data from the metal and electronic industry in Baden-Württemberg from 2010 to 2013, we apply instrumental variable and difference-indifference estimations and find no significant short-term causal impact of the programme.Keywords: disadvantaged youth, apprenticeship training, programme evaluation JEL-Classification: J11, J24, M51, L60. Acknowledgements:The data have been collected during a research project financed by Südwestmetall, the Baden-Württemberg Employer Association of the Metal and Electronic Industry. We thank Südwestmetall for generous support and the allowance for using the data for our research and Klaus-Peter Becker, Tina Hinz, Heinrich Kögel and Philipp Selent for research assistance. Furthermore, we thank two anonymous referees and Bernd Fitzenberger for valuable comments on an earlier version of our paper. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Südwestmetall. All opinions and mistakes are our own.

How does salient information on economic prospects shape human capital investments?

“…Second, this chapter also contributes to the literature on the effects of school-towork transition programs (e.g., Boockmann and Nielen, 2016;Dean et al, 2019; Chapter 3. Beyond Hope and Hype: Evaluating the Expansion of a School-to-Work Transition Program for the Low-Skilled Mohrenweiser and Pfeiffer, 2015;Neumark and Rothstein, 2006;Rodríguez-Planas, 2012). The first contribution of the chapter is that it evaluates a program for individuals who are too low skilled to further invest in schooling because of institutional barriers; e.g., school grades are too bad to pursue a better school degree.…”

“…Dean et al (2019) study the effects of a transition program on the disabled youth, but focused on rehabiliation services without exploiting exogeneous variation in these services. Mohrenweiser and Pfeiffer (2015) study a mentoring program for low-skilled youth, but focus only on the effects on the firm-level due to data limitations. Instead, the transition program I examine experienced a regionally limited but significant increase in funding and participation that allows me to causally identify the effects of the program.…”