Does enhanced mobility of young people improve employment and housing outcomes? Evidence from a large and controlled experiment in France

For disadvantaged young people, access to a means of transportation, whether in the form of a personal vehicle or reliable public transportation, can play an important role in determining school-to-work transitions. In order to find a clean source of identification to assess the impact of reducing commuting costs for such individuals, we conducted a large and controlled experiment to study the impact of the intervention of subsidizing driving lessons in France by randomly assigning young candidates to one of two groups made up of treated and untreated individuals. We assessed the impact of improving their degree of mobility through this intervention on several outcomes, including drivers' testing results, housing, and employment status. We found that young people are less mobile during their training period, and therefore less involved in actively seeking employment or improving on their current position. Once they have passed the driving test, however, these findings are reversed. Finally, we do not discern any significant impact on the important outcome of access to permanent jobs, but we do find a positive yet weak effect on access to temporary jobs.