Rural/Urban Disparities In Employment Outcome Among Youth Aged out of Foster Care: An Intersectional Perspective

Background/Purpose: A growing body of research has documented rural-urban disparities in permanency outcomes and service accessibility among children involved in the child welfare system. Despite substantial efforts to equip youth with job-related skills during the transition out of care, they continue to face elevated risks of unemployment. Guided by an intersectional framework, this study uses the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-being (NSCAW) III assessing risk and protective factors associated with employment outcome and further examine the moderating role of urbanicity in the relationship between job-related skills and employment outcome among youth aging out of foster care.

Methods: This study used data from the NSCAW III, a longitudinal data on the well-being of children and families involved in the child welfare system. A total of 435 participants with an average age of 19.16 years old at Wave 2 were included in this study. Employment status was a binary variable with “1=full- or part-time employed” and “0=not employed”. Youth and young adults who were emancipated or aged 18 and older were eligible for this question at Wave 2. Job-related skills were measured by 5 items at Wave I assessing how prepared participants felt to perform employment-related tasks. Urbanicity was measured as “0=non-urban” and “1=urban”. While controlling for both child-level covariates (i.e., gender, race/ethnicity, placement setting, and maltreatment history) and caregiver-level covariates (i.e.., education, federal poverty level, and employment status), survey-weighted multiple logistic regression was conducted to examine the main effect of job-related skills on employment status. In addition, this study further examined the interaction between urbanity and job-related skills on employment.

Results: Among participants included in this study, 80.9% resided in urban areas and 62.10 % were females. Child’s race and maltreatment history significantly varied by urbanity. In the survey-weighted multiple logistic regression model that included only main effects, job-related skills were not significantly associated with employment status among youth aged 18 and older (OR = 1.16, p = .737). However, non-White youth had significantly lower odds of employment than White non-Hispanic youth (OR = 0.41, p = .009), and older age was associated with greater odds of employment (OR = 1.67, p = .015). In the survey-weighted moderation model, the interaction between urbanicity and job-related skills was statistically significant (OR = 0.22, p = .030), indicating that the association between job-related skills and employment differed by urbanicity. Specifically, among non-urban youth, those with high job-related skills had significantly higher odds of employment than those with low job-related skills (OR = 3.59, p = .003).

Conclusions and Implications: The finding indicates that the impacts of job-related skills on employment vary by urbanicity. In non-urban areas, investing in job-skills training can increase employment prospects among foster youth. In urban areas, child welfare agencies may consider developing other strategies to increase employment. For example, child welfare agencies can collaborate with local employers to create mentoring programs to mentor foster youth on individualizing their pathway to employment. Such mentoring programs can emphasize soft skills such as work ethics, communication and problem-solving skills.