A longitudinal study of New York summer jobs programs found that the summer jobs led to reduced rates of death and incarceration looking back after about 8 years. The magnitude of the effect was impressive, with a 20 percent lower death rate resulting from summer jobs that typically lasted just six weeks. The story at CNN:
Despite the limitations of this study, it is cause for concern about the long-term effects of recession on teenagers. In a recession summer jobs are scarce and are more likely to be taken by unemployed adults, creating a cohort of teenagers most of whom won’t have had the experience of a summer job.
