The Impact of Placing Adolescent Males into Foster Care on Education, Income Assistance, and Convictions

Understanding the causal impacts of taking at-risk youth into government care is part of the evidence base for policy. Two sources of exogenous variation affecting alternative subsets of the at-risk population provide causal impacts interpreted as local average treatment effects. Placing 16to18-year-old males into care decreases or delays high school graduation, increases income assistance receipt, and has alternative effects on criminal convictions depending upon the instrument employed. This suggests that asking whether more or fewer children should be taken into care is insufficient; it also matters which, and how, children are taken into care. JEL classification: J13, I13 This paper arose from work undertaken during a project initiated under the Child and Youth Officer Act and the Representative for Children and Youth Act. The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the authors. This paper is not to be understood as a report under either of these acts, and no representation is made that it expresses the views of the former Child and Youth Officer, the Representative for Children and Youth, the Ministry for Children and Family Development, the Government of British Columbia or the MSFHR. Neither does it necessarily reflect the views of the government of Ontario. The authors thank the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research and the Stauffer-Dunning Chair at Queen’s University for financial support, and they acknowledge helpful comments from two referees, Heather Antecol, Jane Friesen, Thomas Lemieux, Louis-Philippe Morin, Craig Riddell, Jeff Smith, and seminar participants at SFU, UBC, McMaster, Dalhousie, Victoria, and the Canadian Economics Association annual meeting. Any errors are the responsibility of the authors. No university Human Research Ethics Board approval was required or sought for this paper because the work was performed under a nominal contract to the Child and Youth Officer and the Representative for Children and Youth. The person-level data were accessed on their premises, using their computer equipment, by W. Warburton acting as a contract researcher. The other authors had access only to research results (aggregated data). The standards for maintaining the privacy and security of personal information were at the same high level as would have been required for university research. Email: Arthur.Sweetman@McMaster.ca Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d’Economique, Vol. 47, No. 1 February / fevrier 2014. Printed in Canada / Imprime au Canada 0008-4085 / 14 / 35–69 / C © Canadian Economics Association 36 W.P. Warburton, R.N. Warburton, A. Sweetman, and C. Hertzman L’impact du fait de placer des jeunes hommes adolescents en foyer d’accueil sur l’education, l’assistance pour maintenir le revenu, et les condamnations. Comprendre les impacts causes par la prise en charge par le gouvernement d”un jeune a risques est partie integrale d’une politique fondee sur des donnees probantes. Deux sources de variation exogene affectant differentes portions de la population a risque engendrent des impacts qui sont interpretes comme ayant des effets sur le traitement local moyen. Placer des jeunes hommes de 16 a 18 ans en foyer d’accueil diminue ou retarde la diplomation au secondaire, accroit la dependance de l’aide sociale, et a des effets differents sur les condamnations au criminel selon les instruments employes. Voila qui suggere qu’il n’est pas suffisant de se demander si plus ou moins d’enfants devraient etre mis en foyer d’accueil, ce qui est important est plutot de se demander comment on prend soin des enfants.