WORKS Study
Brief
Economic opportunity is a critical driver of health. Threats to opportunity from labor displacing economic changes, such as automation and foreign trade, have been linked to worsening health outcomes. Novel programs that allow workers to develop new job skills can improve health and well-being, but the effects of such programs are currently unknown. The WORKS study will address this gap by assessing the causal effects of a novel, nationally recognized job skills training program on health, psychosocial well-being, and economic mobility.
OFH Contributors
About the Project
The WORKS study is a partnership between Opportunity for Health and the Skills Initiative (SI), a Philadelphia-based workforce development program that provides adults from marginalized communities with the training and career support needed to secure stable and high-quality employment. SI’s model—which has attracted interest from other cities in the U.S.—integrates employer-driven job-specific training placement, career coaching, and soft skills development, with the goal of creating a robust pipeline to economic opportunity in communities with persistently high poverty rates. Since 2021, SI has trained nearly 1,000 individuals over 56 different training sessions into full-time positions and over 80% of participants retain employment one year out.
The WORKS study will assess the impact of SI’s novel program on self-reported physical and mental health, psychosocial stress, hopefulness, and a range of labor market outcomes. The primary aims of the prospective, quasi-experimental study will be to evaluate the effects of participation in skills training program on the following primary outcomes: indices of self-reported physical and mental health and indices of psychosocial well-being based on validated measures of stress and hope. We will also examine a range of secondary outcomes, including labor supply, wages and earnings, beliefs about economic mobility, household financial security and debt and semi-structured qualitative interviews of 25 participants in the treatment group and 25 in the control group to elucidate key mechanisms. WORKS is currently recruiting participants for our study, with the goal to release the first results in 2027.