Can public works programs reduce youth crime? Evidence from Papua New Guinea’s Urban Youth Employment Project

Oleksiy Ivaschenko (), Darian Naidoo (), David Newhouse and Sonya Sultan ()
Additional contact information
Oleksiy Ivaschenko: World Bank
Darian Naidoo: World Bank
Sonya Sultan: World Bank

IZA Journal of Migration and Development, 2017, vol. 7, issue 1, 1-32

Abstract: Abstract Crime rates in Papua New Guinea’s capital city of Port Moresby are among the highest in the world. Few youth work, and good jobs are scarce. In 2013, the National Capital District Commission partnered with the World Bank to implement the Urban Youth Employment Project. The project offers out-of-school and out-of-work youth 2 months of public works employment or, for academically qualified candidates, 6 months of classroom and on-the-job training. This paper presents difference-in-differences estimates of project impacts on participants’ social and criminal behavior, 12 to 18 months after completion. The control group consists of observably similar youth living in areas not served by the program. Project participants became less likely to hang out with friends at night, have a best friend involved in crime, and have friends involved in fights or robberies. The program also increased subsequent employment rates and significantly reduced aggressive behavior and gratuitous property damage. However, there is little robust evidence that the program reduced participants’ engagement in or exposure to crime. The study concludes that the program had strong and healthy effects on participants’ peer group and behavior, but more limited effects on the socio-economic causes of crime.

JEL-codes: C9 J30 J68 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1186/s40176-017-0101-7 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Can public works programs reduce youth crime ? evidence from Papua New Guinea's urban youth employment project (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:izamig:v:7:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1186_s40176-017-0101-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40176

DOI: 10.1186/s40176-017-0101-7

Access Statistics for this article

IZA Journal of Migration and Development is currently edited by Amelie F. Constant, Denis Fougère and Tommaso Colussi

More articles in IZA Journal of Migration and Development from Springer, Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().