Can Mentoring Alleviate Family Disadvantage in Adolescence? A Field Experiment to Improve Labor-Market Prospects

Sven Resnjanskij, Jens Ruhose (), Simon Wiederhold () and Ludger Wößmann
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Ludger Woessmann

VfS Annual Conference 2021 (Virtual Conference): Climate Economics from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association

Abstract: We study a mentoring program that aims to improve the labor-market prospects of schoolattending adolescents from disadvantaged families by offering them a university-student mentor. Our RCT investigates program effectiveness on three outcome dimensions that are highly predictive of adolescents' later labor-market success: math grades, patience/social skills, and labor-market orientation. For low-SES adolescents, the one-to-one mentoring increases a combined index of the outcomes by half a standard deviation after one year, with significant increases in each dimension. Part of the treatment effect is mediated by establishing mentors as attachment figures who provide guidance for the future. The mentoring is not effective for higher-SES adolescents. The results show that substituting lacking family support by other adults can help disadvantaged children at adolescent age.

Keywords: mentoring; disadvantaged youths; adolescence; school performance; patience; social skills; labor-market orientation; field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H52 I24 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/242341/1/vfs-2021-pid-48694.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Can Mentoring Alleviate Family Disadvantage in Adolescence? A Field Experiment to Improve Labor Market Prospects (2024)
Working Paper: Can Mentoring Alleviate Family Disadvantage in Adolscence? A Field Experiment to Improve Labor-Market Prospects (2021)
Working Paper: Can Mentoring Alleviate Family Disadvantage in Adolescence? A Field Experiment to Improve Labor-Market Prospects (2021)
Working Paper: Can Mentoring Alleviate Family Disadvantage in Adolescence? A Field Experiment to Improve Labor-Market Prospects (2021)
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:zbw:vfsc21:242341

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in VfS Annual Conference 2021 (Virtual Conference): Climate Economics from Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().