Policy Implications of the Cost of Youth Development

The accelerated trend of the past decade toward empowering our nation's young people to succeed has fostered a new awareness and commitment to this most valuable resource. Unfortunately, the money required to support this commitment and realize change has not kept up the pace. Our youth cannot truly be a priority until we back up our good intentions with the funding needed to demonstrate this priority.

Securing the financial resources necessary to provide the supports and opportunities our youth need to be come healthy, productive members of society requires answers to some basic questions:

Youth Development for All Youth

Some progress has been made through new initiatives in education finance reform and services integeration, providing more effective delivery of social, health and educational services for children and youth from the classroom up to the government level. However, the issue of increasing financial commitment to youth development continues to be addressed in targeted and fragmented ways. Many would contend that this is the "nature of the beast" and that the meager available resources should support the development of those youth in most desperate and immediate need. This is understandable in light of current limited funds, but we must not lose sight of the ideal:

adequate and secure funding for the developmental supports and opportunities that all youth need on the road to a productive, healthy and economically viable adulthood.

This document is an excerpt from a report entitled A Matter of Money: The Cost and Financing of Youth Development, which establishes an initial framework and formula for assessing the financial resources and mechanisms necessary to move American society closer to this ideal. To better educate youth advocates in both the public and private sector as to the financial resources required to help all youth achieve positive outcomes, we explored the dollars and financing mechanisms which do and should exist for youth. Keeping our ideal of youth development for all youth in mind, the Center for Youth Development and Policy Research (The Center) set out to investigate how current efforts measure up to the ideal and how we could move more confidently in the direction of that ideal.

Of the limited data and general information available on youth development services and spending, we were able to reaffirm the following observations:

• Spending is framented amongst a vast array of disparate goverment entities and is undertaken in the absence of a comprehensive strategy for youth.
• Spending is primarily for programs providing crisis intervention rather than development.
• Spending primarily targets at-risk youth as opposed to all youth.

The follow were found to be potential root causes of these trends in spending:

Devaluation of adolescents —Providing the supports our adolescents need will require a critical examination of, and change in, society's attitude toward them. Unfortunately, adolescents are often the forgotten and undervalued segment of America's youth population.

Lack of consensus on youth development —Both the terminology and concept of youth development have yet to take widespread root in the policy and funding arenas. The use of the term itself is often inconstistent or unclear which, amongst the other problems this causes, makes it difficult to translate youth development into more dollars for all youth.

Lack of integrated structure around the delivery of services and funds for youth —Fragmented programs and funding for youth must become more responsive and accountable for all youth. This will only come about with a comprehensive and integrated strategy and structure grounded in developmental principles and practices.

Lack of adequate and protected funding —Funds are not protected and dedicated in the manner necessary to sustain the long-term, comprehensive process that is youth development. Increased funds for youth development will be most effective only if they are adequate and secure.

Moving Toward the Ideal

In moving away from these circumstances and toward the ideal of adequate and secure funding for developmental supports and opportunities for all youth, we must seek ways to apply tangible and "fundable" numbers to our ideal. An examination of the time and costs associated with youth in non-family, out-of-school circumstances points to an estimated cost of $2.55 per hour or $3,060 per youth, per year (1,200 hours). This calculation provides a baseline annual sum of $144 billion to provide youth development supports and opportunities to all school-age children and youth in the United States.

The Center's method for devising such a baseline number is just one way this could be done. There needs to be futher investigation and collaboration on applying other concrete costs and financing mechanisms to youth development.

Getting There

Hopefully, the information and ideas presented here will lead to increased efforts at all levels to determine the resources we must be prepared to invest in our youth. We can support the move toward the ideal by:

Seeking new types of information —Information we need to move ahead includes: data on youth development services and opportunities now in existence at local, state, and federal levels, and the costs associated with them; developmental indiciators; formulas and methods for calculating youth development costs.

Building on the after-school momentum —Public attention to, and investment in, quality after-school opportunities for school-age youth could provide the necessary vehicle for increasing public understanding of, and ommitment to, youth development on a larger scale.

Making a sustainable public investment —Youth development is an investment that must be made by each sector of the wider community—public and private. Examination of the federal-state matching, local dedicated taxes an incentives for business and philanthropy could lead to models for providing adequate and sustainable funding for youth development.