NBER Working Papers by Mary Joyce

In the wake of the 1994 School-to-Work Opportunities Act (STWOA), we introduce and study two new data sources to estimate the extent to which school-to-work programs have been implemented in U.S. high schools, and the extent to which high school students are participating in these programs. The first data source, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1997 (NLSY97), provides information directly form students on whether they participated in these programs. The second source, the 1996 School Administrators's Survey, was administered to schools attended by NLSY97 interviewees, and provides information directly from schools on whether they offered any school-to-work programs. Findings from the 1996 School Administrator's Survey show that school-to-work programs are commonly offered, wit...

A critical impediment to research on school-to-work programs has been the absence of large representative data sets with information on such programs. In contrast, the new NLSY (NLSY97) offers researchers opportunities to analyze direct evidence on school-to-work programs. In the NLSY97, individuals are asked a set of survey questions about programs schools offer to help students prepare for the world of work,' and an accompanying survey includes information on school-to-work programs offered by schools attended by the interviewees. These data, coupled with observations on multiple individuals in the same schools, potentially allow researchers to estimate the effects of school-to-work programs on individuals while accounting for possible bias from selection into these programs, althoug...