About MDRC
Dai is a research associate at MDRC. She has 15 years of experience in SAS programming and has worked at MDRC for more than 10 years. She has processed various types of data at MDRC, including baseline, program-participation, unemployment-insurance-wage, administrative-record, survey, National Directory of New Hires, criminal-history-record, and medical-claim data. She has worked on multiple MDRC projects such as Enhanced Services for the Hard-to-Employ, the Colorado Coordinated Care Program, the Youth Transition Demonstration, Youth Build, the CEO Replication, CII, the Enhanced Transitional Jobs Demonstration, the Subsidized and Transitional Employment Demonstration, the Summer Youth Employment Program, and PACE. Prior to joining MDRC, Dai worked in population studies and economic research at the East-West Center at Honolulu, Hawaii. She holds a master’s degree from the University of Hawaii, and earned a medical degree and practiced medicine in China.
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MDRC Publications
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Other Publications
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Projects
Megan Millenky, Dan Bloom, Susan Scrivener, Charles Michalopoulos, Dina A. R. Israel, Johanna Walter, Peter Baird, Lauren Cates, Sally Dai, Caroline Mage, Emily Marano, Viktoriya Syrov, Emmi Obara, Nicole MorrisMany Americans struggle in the labor market even when overall economic conditions are good. Unemployment is persistently high for some demographic groups and in certain geographic areas, and a large proportion of working-age adults — about one in five in 2017 — tend to be out of the labor force. In addition, in recent decades broad economic trends have...
This MDRC study assesses the academic and labor market impacts of New York City’s Summer Youth Employment Program ( SYEP ), the nation’s largest summer jobs program for young people.
The federal government has greatly reduced its funding for summer job programs. These programs, however, have attracted increased attention in light of the unprecedented increase...
Megan Millenky, Jean Grossman, Louisa Treskon, Melanie Skemer, Sally Dai, Lily Freedman, Caroline MageYoung girls and women make up an increasing share of the youth in the juvenile justice system, despite a national decline in the overall rate of juvenile incarceration in this country. In 2011, girls made up nearly 30 percent of all juvenile arrests, up from 20 percent in 1980. However, girls account for a very small share of the juvenile arrests for violent crimes and...
Dan Bloom, Sally Dai, Bret Barden, Melanie Skemer, David Navarro, Jillian Verrillo, Yana Kusayeva, Gary ReynoldsIn the past three decades, broad economic shifts have sharply decreased the availability of good jobs for workers without postsecondary education. Disadvantaged men have been particularly hard hit by these trends. Many of these men become enmeshed in the criminal justice and child support enforcement systems, which are increasingly focusing on how to help their “...
Dan Bloom, Richard Hendra, Melanie Skemer, David Navarro, Sally Dai, Bret Barden, Kyla Wasserman, Jillian Verrillo, Gary Reynolds, Chloe Anderson GolubOver the past 80 years, a variety of subsidized employment strategies have been used for two main purposes: (1) to provide work-based income support for people who are not able to find regular, unsubsidized jobs; and (2) to improve the employability of disadvantaged groups. Programs with the first goal have typically emerged during periods of sustained high...
In April 2005, approximately 776,000 young people with disabilities between the ages of 14 and 25 were receiving federal Supplemental Security Income benefits. Individuals who began receiving these benefits before age 18 were expected to stay on the disability rolls for an average of 27 years. Programs that could help young people with disabilities make a successful...
Despite skyrocketing health care spending, many people in the United States do not receive the health care they need. In addition to the tens of millions of Americans who lack health insurance, those with insurance often get inadequate care because the fractured American health care system makes it difficult for individuals to make appropriate health care choices. Lack...
Cynthia Miller, Dan Bloom, Dina A. R. Israel, Michelle S. Manno, John Martinez, Megan Millenky, Sharon Rowser, Louisa Treskon, Sally Dai, Caroline MageMaking the successful transition to adulthood had become increasingly challenging for disadvantaged young people. Two changes in the labor market have contributed to this trend. First, the rise in demand for higher skilled workers, while increasing the payoff to college, has resulted in declining real wages for less-educated workers. On top of this, youth are finding...
Dan Bloom, Lauren Cates, JoAnn Hsueh, Dina A. R. Israel, Charles Michalopoulos, Johanna Walter, Sally Dai, Ximena PortillaFueled by a strong economy and passage of the 1996 federal welfare law, which imposed new work requirements and time limits on cash benefits, welfare caseloads declined precipitously during the 1990s. Between 1993 and 2000, the number of families on welfare dropped 56 percent nationally, with individual states experiencing reductions ranging from 20 percent to more...