Effects of Unemployment Compensation on the Unemployment of Youths. NLS Discussion Paper

摘要

This report examines the role of unemployment insurance (Ur) policies on the amount of unemployment that youths experience between jobs. Specifically, the analysis focuses on determining how the weekly benefit amounts and the weeks of eligibility offered by Ur programs influence three aspects of nonemployment activities: the total length of time spent in nonemployment; the fraction of this time reported as unemployment; and the likelihood that an individual collects Ur during a nonemployment episode. En route to this primary objective, we pursue two intermediate goals concerned with developing a picture of youths' participation in the labor market and utilization of Ur programs exploiting the rich source of data provided by the Youth Cohort of National Longitudinal Survey (YNLS). The first of these goals involves the computation of a comprehensive summary of the weekly work and earnings experiences of youths, and the second consists of assessing the extent to which youths are eligible for Ur and the degree to which they draw on Ur entitlements. The aim is to identify two sets of patterns: those describing differences across demographic characteristics; and those capturing changes over the period 1979-1984 covered by the data.