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This chapter shows what happens when two different sets of youth volunteers are supposed to meet as equals in the civic engagement projects. Disadvantaged youth often overhear the public speeches about them, documenting their programs' effectiveness in preventing crime, drug abuse, and pregnancy. So it makes sense when they speak of themselves as outcomes and variables; they understand that they themselves are considered the main problem to solve. Non-disadvantaged youth assume, in contrast, that they are supposed to solve the problems of distant others. The two sets of volunteers cannot talk about this inequality together, but they have to know about it in order to make sense of action in the programs.

This chapter discusses the notion of ‘disadvantaged youth’, which often serves to hide rather than to explain who is affected by transition risks, something that makes it difficult to address such risks adequately. In this regard, policy actors relate young people's vulnerability in transitions to work to the social construction of disadvantage through modes of ascription and compensation. The discussion includes local partnerships and networks as well as holistic approaches addressing the whole person. It also addresses the issue of the way in which specific policy approaches for the disadvantaged often entail the risk of stigmatisation and demotivation as well.

This chapter evaluates the extent, nature and consequences of poverty in relation to young people in urban settings. It focuses on two concentrated poverty areas in Liverpool — Dingle and Speke. The chapter examines the conceptualisations of disadvantaged and excluded youth in relation to their neighbourhoods and their perspectives on area-based regeneration initiatives. Finally, the chapter assesses the impact of state policy on youth poverty and considers the potential for youth participation within area-based regeneration.

The 2008 economic crisis and subsequent austerity policies have had profoundly damaging impacts for young adults across Europe in ways which threaten to seriously undermine their capacity to make successful transitions to adult independence.Nevertheless, reliable evidence on youth living standards and living conditions in the wake of these cataclysmic events has been scarce.This chapter provides new evidence on the nature, extent and social distribution of vulnerability to poverty and social exclusion amongst young adults in the UK. The work described here updates earlier analyses of the 1999 PSE-GB study using a comparable methodology. The chapter therefore examines trends in poverty and wider forms of social exclusion for young adults over the 1999-2012 period.These data reveal a dramatic increase in youth material and social deprivation over this period and, using a range of different measures, a rise in the extent of youth poverty which requires urgent policy action.

This chapter represents an attempt to systematically study the effects of pre-kindergarten participation on student behavior. The issue—that preschool separates parents from children during crucial years of their development as a result of either an elective or required return to the workforce—remains at the heart of the debate over its potentially zero-sum benefit/harm ratio. The study examines whether children who attended public school pre-kindergarten in Florida acquired a better grasp of socially acceptable behavior than their four-year-old peers who attended either a nonpublic preschool or no preschool at all. The analysis indicates that public pre-kindergarten leads to reduced student disciplinary problems and reduced rates of being classified emotionally disabled or severely emotionally disturbed. It is found that the favorable estimated effects of public pre-kindergarten programs are concentrated in the least advantaged communities. In relatively advantaged neighborhoods, public pre-kindergarten programs do not have appreciable behavioral benefits. This may be due to differences in community institutions, neighborhood effects, or private pre-kindergarten alternatives in these more advantaged neighborhoods.

Many states have discussed raising the school leaving age to seventeen or eighteen, almost making high school completion compulsory. This chapter uses these recent changes to the school leaving age to explore the potential for compulsory schooling to serve as an effective policy for improving current social-economic outcomes, especially for today's disadvantaged youth. The purpose is to present new evidence and discussion for considering whether to support such policies. Past studies only indicate that compulsory school laws appear to have been effective in generating adult gains for would-be dropouts many decades ago. The chapter focuses on whether recent changes and experiences have had any impact on increasing school enrollment and attainment. It estimates the subsequent impact on earnings and on other labor market outcomes for the small fraction affected by these laws. The overall results suggest that raising the school leaving age above sixteen offers significant gains to earnings and employment outcomes, on average, to students who otherwise would have left sooner.