Moving youth away from the market for crime: interventions in the Honduras Safer Municipalities Project

This study is an experimental impact evaluation of a labor market intervention targeting at-risk youth in high-violence municipalities in Honduras. The intervention combines vocational training, soft skills training through cognitive behavioral therapy, and temporary job placements and targets two groups of at-risk youth: (i) youth currently in secondary school grades 7-9 and (ii) youth that are no longer in school and are weakly attached to the labor market. Participants in the first group will be offered a school-break internship program (November-January), while participants in the second group will be offered a more intensive training and labor insertion program lasting up to one year. An add-on mentoring scheme will be offered to a random sub-set of participants in both programs.

Using a randomized controlled study design, we will study whether the combination of vocational training, cognitive behavioral therapy, and a temporary job can prevent delinquency, promote positive behaviors, improve mental well-being, and reduce drop-out (for youth still in school) or improve post-intervention labor market outcomes (for youth no longer in school). Furthermore, individual mentors will be randomly assigned to a subset of program participants to study whether this additional component strengthens the effects observed through the main intervention and/or improves their sustainability.

This study takes places in the context of the World Bank-assisted Safer Municipalities Project, and has been developed in collaboration with the Government of Honduras. The evaluation will be carried out in purposively selected urban areas in three municipalities with homicide rates above 90 per 100,000 inhabitants.