Around 30% of youth clubs in London closed between 2010 and 2019
as a result of cuts to local authority funding. New research,
published today as an IFS working paper, examines the impact of
these closures on local teenagers' rates of criminal activity and
educational outcomes, by comparing offending rates and exam
results among teenagers who live in an area where all local youth
clubs closed with those among teenagers whose nearest youth club
stayed open. There are two primary conclusions.
First, teenagers whose nearest youth club was closed went
on to do worse in school. Specifically, London youths
who lost access to a nearby youth club performed nearly 4% of a
standard deviation worse in their GCSE exams. Converting this
into GCSE grades is complicated by the reforms of the mid 2010s,
but it is roughly equivalent to a decline of half a grade in one
subject. The effects were even more severe for pupils from lower
socio-economic backgrounds (defined as those entitled to free
school meals), whose test scores fell by almost 12% of a standard
deviation (which corresponds roughly to doing more than a grade
worse in one subject).
Second, youth club closures led to an increase in
offending. Young people who lost access to a youth club
were 14% more likely to engage in criminal activity in the six
years following closure: the offending rate (the fraction of
residents aged 10 to 17 who commit a crime each year) went from
14 per 1,000 to 16 per 1,000. There were particularly large
increases in acquisitive crimes (e.g. theft, robbery and
shoplifting), drug offences and violent crimes.
Carmen Villa, PhD student at University of Warwick and
enrichment student at IFS, who authored the research,
said:
‘Youth clubs provide support to teenagers that goes beyond
recreation, offering mentorship, structured activities such as
sports and music, and a safe space for socialising – resources
many teens cannot find elsewhere. Teens like and use these clubs:
in 2009, 40% of Londoners aged between 11 and 16 attended at
least once a week. But public spending cuts in the 2010s led to
the closure of 30% of youth clubs in London, and this research
shows that this directly led to increased offending and worse
GCSE outcomes, especially among those from lower socio-economic
backgrounds. Overall, the societal costs of increased crime and
lost education far outweigh the initial savings from youth club
closures.'
