Young and Disconnected in America

Emily Ashenfelter

You're listening to Policy Minded, a podcast by RAND. I'm Emily Ashenfelter.

Emily Ashenfelter

Millions of young people in the U.S. are not in school, not working, and not training for a career. These are America's disconnected youth, and their stories aren't just about individual struggles. They're about the future of the workforce, the strength of our communities, and the pathways available to the next generation.

RAND researchers Jennie Wenger and Stephanie Bonds are with us today to discuss who these young people are, what puts youth at risk of becoming disconnected in the first place, and how to help them reconnect and thrive in adulthood. Jennie, welcome.

Jennie Wenger

Hello, we're happy to be here and to talk with you about our work today.

Emily Ashenfelter

Great, and Stephanie, thanks for being here.

Stephanie Bonds

Thank you for having us on the podcast today, Emily. I'm also excited to share this work.

Emily Ashenfelter

So just to get us started, let's talk about what the term disconnected use really means. Who are we talking about here?

Jennie Wenger

Working disconnected means not working towards a degree, a credential or a certificate, not being employed for pay, and not in a training or apprentice program. One thing I want to point out is that disconnected youth may have very few responsibilities, or they may have many. For example, this category includes young people who live with parents or other family and you have no source of income. The stereotype, perhaps, is a young man who spends many hours online and doesn't interact very much in real life. This category, though, also includes those who leave high school without a diploma and struggle to find work.

The overall unemployment rate is quite low across the economy, but the rate among 16 to 19-year-olds has hovered around 15 percent for the last few months. Again, those with no high school degree also have a relatively high rate of unemployment. So disconnected youth could be searching for work. Young mothers is another group, particularly those who are unmarried, often live with other family members—and they spend their time in caregiving activities. They meet the definition of disconnected, but we think of them in a bit of a separate category because we think their experiences and the policies that will influence them are different from the rest of the group.

Emily Ashenfelter

That's such a wide range of experiences—from young people who've left school early to those caring for children or family members. It really shows how varied this group is. How many young people would you say fit into this category?

Jennie Wenger

That's a great question. Our estimates are about one in seven young people. And we're defining young people as 18 to 24-year-olds. At any point in time, about one in seven people is disconnected. This translates to over four million young people at any point and time.

Emily Ashenfelter

The data that we're talking about here, how far back does it go?

Jennie Wenger

Also a really good question. We have several different sources of data and information. We have used, for instance, the American Community Survey. American Community Survey goes back many years, but we've focused on a five-year sample starting in 2019. We've also used RAND's American Life Panel and American Youth Panel. And Stephanie could tell us about one of the datasets that she's become a real expert in.

Stephanie Bonds

Yes, thanks, Jennie. And to better understand the factors that precede disconnection earlier in people's lives, we used the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, also known as ADHELP. And this is a nationally representative longitudinal study that started in 1994 and tracks over 20,000 U.S. adolescents, grades 7 to 12 in 1994, into an adulthood. And an advantage of this data is it allows us to look at adolescents' early life experiences in high school, such as substance use, mental health, academic achievement, and parent factors, and examines how those predict the likelihood of being disconnected later in adulthood.

Emily Ashenfelter

That's helpful context. Now, I'm wondering about some of the implications of being disconnected. How are disconnected youths different from their peers who are in school or at work or training for a job?

Stephanie Bonds

So we have some related evidence from Clive Belfield, Henry Levin, and Rachel Rosen's work that shows that disconnected youth are less likely to be employed and more likely to rely on government support. They report worse health status later in life and are more likely to be involved in criminal activity. And they also find that there's costly implications for taxpayers and society, both now and in the future.

Emily Ashenfelter

Very interesting. And do we know anything about how the rate of disconnection has changed over time? Is it improving? Is it getting worse?

Jennie Wenger

Now that's such an interesting question. The rate of disconnection went up really sharply during the pandemic, but it appears to have stabilized pretty quickly afterwards. One thing I want to mention is disconnection is not a uniquely American phenomenon. This is measured in countries around the world. We have consistent measures that show substantial numbers of young people who are disconnected in a wide variety of countries around the world. Sometimes these young people are referred to as opportunity youth. Or, the European term is often NEET, N-E-E T, but it's a very similar definition.

Now, over the last 20 or 30 years, the rate of disconnection among young women appears to have gone down, well, ignoring the pandemic, the rate among young men appears stable or to have increased a bit. I think that that's really interesting because during the same time period, We've seen a big drop in teen pregnancy, which we think is one of the things that drives disconnection among young women. And we've seen big increase in the high school graduation or completion rate. The dropout rate fell by about 50% over the last two to two and a half decades. Despite that, the rate of disconnection has not changed very much. So that suggests to me at least that getting everybody through high school, if this were possible, or seeing a continued decrease in teen pregnancy is not gonna solve this issue.

Emily Ashenfelter

When you look at other countries, are there examples of programs or approaches that seem to help young people stay engaged or find their footing?

Jennie Wenger

Speaking generally, we do see other countries having stronger apprenticeship programs, and this is likely going to drive down the disconnected youth in those areas. Mentorship programs are probably as strong in the United States as other places. We do think that mentorship is something that could decrease disconnection in the long run, too.

Emily Ashenfelter

Stephanie, you mentioned that you looked at the factors that precede disconnection. Can you tell us what those are?

Stephanie Bonds

Sure, we use the panel nature of the ADHELP data to examine the early life characteristics measured in high school that might explain later life disconnection. So we find that adolescents who eventually become disconnected are different from their connected peers across several dimensions, even in high school. They are more likely to report symptoms of depression, use substances, engage in delinquent activities, and they also report having weaker social support structures. Even after accounting for other observed family and school characteristics, we find that suspension in school for males is a risk factor for later life disconnection and early pregnancy before age 18 for females is a factor for disconnection. All of this suggests that preventative policies that reduce these risk factors early on in high school may lower the likelihood of later disconnection.

Emily Ashenfelter

What are some of the demographic differences you identified?

Jennie Wenger

We compared rates of disconnection between young men and young women, which are relatively similar. We find much higher rates, though, among young African Americans, those who identify as Native American or Alaska Native. As I mentioned, those with no high school diploma or who've earned a GED are more likely than others to report being disconnected. And those who reported disability have high rates of disconnection. But we've also begun looking beyond the individual. We found that those who live in communities where adult men are often not working are more likely to report disconnection. We expect, too, that poverty in general—but also geography, population, living in a rural area versus another area—will explain disconnection We also believe that linkages across the community could be important.

There's a lot of new and emerging research. It's really exciting. It examines a whole host of community characteristics, including people's interactions with others across the economic spectrum. A lot of this is coming out of Opportunity Insights, a lab at Harvard run by an economist named Raj Chetty. And they generously make their data available. Um, this has been shown to be very predictive of children's eventual outcomes. And what we're working on right now is figuring out how this does or does not explain disconnection at the community level.

Emily Ashenfelter

Are there any indications as to why you see some of these differences?

Jennie Wenger

I think we're seeing indications that the differences could be driven by a whole bunch of factors—individual factors, family factors, school experience. As Stephanie mentioned, community factors, economic factors, a lot of things that are related to resources and opportunities.

Emily Ashenfelter

Okay. Let's talk about school experience specifically. You found that most disconnected youths have at least a high school diploma. What does this tell us?

Jennie Wenger

Yes, that was a finding that I found a bit surprising. The large majority of disconnected youth have at least a high school diploma. Now, partly this reflects, as I mentioned earlier, we as a society have done a pretty good job of getting people through high school. The number of students who leave high school without a credential has dropped substantially in the last 25 years. But what this indicates is that a high-school diploma alone is not going to be completely protective against disconnection in our modern economy.

Emily Ashenfelter

Okay. You also looked at young veterans, and I noticed that female veterans report relatively high rates of disconnection. What might be behind that pattern?

Jennie Wenger

We have some theories about that. It's a fairly small sample, I should point out, but RAND does a lot of work on veterans. And we know that the transition from service back to the civilian world can be a bit rocky. Partly this could be mechanical in the sense that when you leave the military, you do become disconnected from your job and often your community. So leaving the military is a transition. For female veterans, in particular, they tend to have relatively high rates of marriage at relatively young ages. And moving their entire family to a new place could drive their disconnection.

Emily Ashenfelter

That's really interesting. It sounds like transitions can be challenging in different ways. You've mentioned community factors a few times. How do local conditions, like job opportunities or social connections, seem to relate to whether young people stay engaged?

Jennie Wenger

I don't think we know the answer to that in a way that I could say something about a specific proportion, for example. I do think that everything we've seen tells us that family, community, and school factors are likely to be really important. I mean, if we think about employment in particular, a young person's probability of unemployment is largely driven by the opportunities in their community. So we think community factors are really important.

Emily Ashenfelter

That makes sense. I'm wondering, have researchers looked at how the overall economic picture of a community connects with youth disconnection?

Jennie Wenger

There have been studies that show that economic connections are really important for children's eventual outcomes. Most of those have not focused on disconnection, per se. And we think that's a space—a hole in the literature, something that's not known. And we hope our research is really going to add to general knowledge by having some focus on that.

Emily Ashenfelter

Okay, so there's still more to learn about how place and opportunity fit together. Were there any findings that really surprised you or changed how you think about young people's experiences?

Jennie Wenger

I would quickly reiterate the fact that most young people complete high school and most disconnected young people do, too. I want to be really clear that graduating from high school is a positive event. It has positive outcomes. And those who graduate are less likely than others to become disconnected. Education could be a protective factor in other ways as well. It could shorten spells of disconnection, for example. We don't know that. We're really interested in learning more about that. But, I think Stephanie probably has something to add here.

Stephanie Bonds

One finding that surprised me was how early the pathways towards youth disconnection began. So as I mentioned earlier, we found that young people who later become disconnected from school and work already differed from their peers early on during middle and high school. So they're more likely to have depression, weak social support systems, and face disciplinary actions such as suspension. And I think this challenges a common misconception that disconnected youth suddenly fall off track later on. Instead, the evidence suggests that these risk factors develop much earlier and are tied to structural experiences in adolescence, such as mental health challenges, school discipline practices, and the limited support network.

Jennie Wenger

I think that's an excellent point, and I think a lot of what we're learning in social science research right now is about how childhood experiences are reflected much later. Like all of the Moving To Opportunity research suggests that moving a family to a neighborhood with slightly more advantage or slightly more opportunities has positive long-term impacts on children's outcomes. That's great that we have some examples.

Emily Ashenfelter

That's great that we have some examples of what might help disconnected youth. So we've been talking about youth disconnection and all the factors that might be associated with it. As these young people move into adulthood, what tends to happen next for them?

Jennie Wenger

Yeah, that's a great question. They likely enter adulthood with less education, less training, and less work experience than their peers. And there's a lot of evidence that the work experience that you get when you're quite young has long-term positive impacts on young people's trajectories, too. Long-term negative effects, though, could include, of course, employment, career. But also, what we might see is young people who've been disconnected end up with a lower level of economic security. They're less likely to be in the middle class, for example, and less likely have stable outcomes.

Emily Ashenfelter

And when we think about this on a larger scale—millions of young people—what does that mean for communities and for society more broadly?

Jennie Wenger

I mean, a list that just sort of comes to mind. And Stephanie, please add other things I forget. Lower wages. Disconnection seems to be linked to lower health outcomes. Stephanie mentioned some of those. More interaction with the criminal justice system. Lost tax revenue. Lost productivity. Increasing use of social services and safety net.

Stephanie Bonds

So evidence shows that disconnected youth are less likely to be employed, more likely to rely on government support networks. There's costs to health, and they're more likely to be involved in criminal activity. And research also shows that there's costs both to society at large and taxpayers more directly from these things. So we do think that the economic and social implications of disconnectedness is large.

Emily Ashenfelter

So it reall goes much—it can—go much further beyond the individual. It can affect communities. It can effect society as a whole.

Jennie Wenger

Yes. And the estimates for the costs of these things are very large. Now, some of the things I've described are difficult to put a monetary value on, but some work from about 15 years ago suggested that there's a social burden of about $50,000 a year total for every year that a young person is disconnected. And a person who spends four or five years disconnected? The total cost to the individual, community, and society over that person's lifetime could approach a million dollars.

Emily Ashenfelter

What kinds of things seem to help young people stay connected and build momentum as they move into adulthood?

Jennie Wenger

I mean, there are many. We do know that disconnection rates are lower among those who complete additional education. There's some evidence that suggests that early work experience is really positive here. But we do think social connections are very important as well. For instance, one of the things we've learned in the last couple of decades is that mentoring has very positive long-term impacts on children as well. Those who have a long-term relationship with a mentor, say, for a couple of years, have much better outcomes when they get to college age and into the workforce. We also know that young men are less likely to have a mentor, so that suggests there's an important role for adults—perhaps particularly adult men—in communities providing mentorship to young men.

Stephanie Bonds

One thing I'll add from the ADHELP data is that it suggests that preventative policies that reduce risk factors in high school—such as restorative justice programs for suspensions or academic support—will be important for preventing later life disconnectedness. And we also think that peer networks are likely to be important. And some of our upcoming planned work will examine the roles of peer networks in shaping later, likelihood of disconnection.

Emily Ashenfelter

That's great, Stephanie. Can you talk a little bit more about, you know, what does that look like? What does a peer network look like for disconnected youth?

Stephanie Bonds

Yeah, that's a great question. So, in the ADHELP data, we're thinking of peers as classmates that they're going to school with. So we think there's reason to believe that this forms an important social network for adolescents. And one might have their own mental health issues, but having peers with mental health issues or substance abuse issues or suspension might also affect one's own risks. And so, our upcoming work is going to try to tease out the differences between one's own risks and the risks that the peers pose.

Emily Ashenfelter

That's such a thoughtful way to think about it—not just what's happening for one person, but what's happened around them. Are there things that might make disconnection harder to overcome?

Jennie Wenger

I would posit future social isolation. And, of course, the more communities we have that have low resources and fewer opportunities for young people are likely to drive disconnection, too.

Emily Ashenfelter

Absolutely. So we've already identified some gaps that need addressing through research, and you're continuing to study this topic. What other questions are you asking?

Stephanie Bonds

Sure, yeah, so we have some upcoming things that we'd like to examine with more work. One thing is examining the experiences faced by young mothers in more detail, because we think this is a very different population than those who are simply not engaged in work or school. And we're also interested, as I mentioned, in understanding how exposure to high-risk peer environments during adolescence affects the likelihood of being disconnected in early adulthood.

Emily Ashenfelter

Great. That sounds like really valuable work. Was there a story or a response or a data point from the research so far that's really stayed with you?

Stephanie Bonds

One thing that's staying with me is the importance of identifying and preventing early risk factors for disconnection. Because disconnection is correlated with high school performance, suspension, pregnancy, substance abuse, it suggests that risk factors emerge early, and preventative policies integrated in schools that reduce these risks may reduce the likelihood of later disconnection.

Jennie Wenger

And I'm very interested in the community factors and understanding more about how communities shape young people's experiences.

Emily Ashenfelter

And do we have a sense ... are there any indicators as to what age would be the appropriate age or most effective age at which to intervene and make sure youth stay connected?

Jennie Wenger

I think the answer is probably late middle school, early high school. We hope to learn more about this from the adolescent health dataset, but there is some evidence that students who leave high school without a credential sort of check out a long time before they're actually allowed to leave school. School enrollment rules may keep young people in school until the age of 18 in many states. But there's pretty good evidence that their lack of interest in school starts significantly before that. So, I think the answer is perhaps middle school, early high school.

Emily Ashenfelter

Okay. So what's the one thing you want our listeners to take away from this episode?

Jennie Wenger

I would say, disconnection among young people has really large costs for the young people themselves, for their community, for society at large. At any point in time, one in seven young people are disconnected. And that's over four million young people. So this is a widespread issue that we may not recognize as we walk around in our day-to-day lives. But the large costs of disconnection also suggest that we could see really large returns for making investments in these young people before they become disconnected.

Stephanie Bonds

Yeah, I agree with Jennie that disconnection has really large costs. And I think that there is really important benefits for identifying which factors might predict disconnection early on, so that we can address those longer-run costs to both the individuals and to society as a whole.

Emily Ashenfelter

That's a great takeaway. And...thinking about parents, teachers, and community leaders, what would you want them to keep in mind when they're trying to support young people who might be struggling to stay connected?

Stephanie Bonds

I think one message for parents or teachers or other community leaders is that if you recognize some early warning signs—like perhaps some mental health issues or some disciplinary issues like suspension—it is important to use resources like mental health resources and get help early on, because we see that these things can compound into longer-run effects.

Jennie Wenger

Yeah, and I would add that this is a whole-community project. We do believe that mentoring and other programs that create stronger connections across communities can help young people to remain connected and can have really positive outcomes for the whole community.

Emily Ashenfelter

That's such an encouraging message—that connection really is something communities can build together. Jennie, Stephanie, thank you both for sharing your insights and for the work you're doing.

Jennie Wenger

Oh, thank you so much for the opportunity to talk with you.

Stephanie Bonds

Thanks, Emily, for the opportunity. We really enjoyed the discussion.

Emily Ashenfelter

And as always, thank you to our listeners. You can learn more about the work we discussed today at rand.org/policyminded. Today's episode was recorded and edited by me, Emily Ashenfelter. Deanna Lee is our producer and Pete Wilmoth is RAND's director of digital communications.

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