Targeting Sectors to Narrow the Gap

At the New School, I am an Urban Policy graduate student at the Milano School for International Affairs, Management and Urban Policy, with a concentration in education policy and geographic information systems. A Professional Development Report (PDR) is our department's final policy project that is completed with a client in the final semester. My final project centers around the Disconnected Youth (% ages 16 to 24 not in school and not working) population of NYC and seeks to highlight ways that NYC is intervening with these youth.

Measure of America’s first report, states that within the city, the neighborhood a young person grows up in is highly predictive of his or her chances of disconnection. In New York City, there is an uneven balance of disconnection between the metro areas and the suburban areas and even more so between boroughs. For example: In Manhattan’s East Side neighborhoods of Turtle Bay, Gramercy and Stuyvesant Town, only 3.7 percent of young people are disconnected. However, in the Bronx neighborhoods of Melrose, Hunts Point, and Mott Haven, the rate is nearly ten times higher, 35.6 percent (MoA,2012).