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The article describes some evaluation findings from a longitudinal study of young people receiving business start-up assistance, through the Prince's Trust (with financial support from the Government). Unusually for evaluations of self-employment schemes, it focuses not solely on issues of deadweight and business survival, but also looks at the impact of programme participation on the subsequent labour market outcomes of participants. It uses a matched comparison group methodology to model programme impact, and finds no statistical evidence that supported entry to self-employment has an impact on participants' subsequent ‘employability’. After controlling for other factors, those who leave the programme are no more likely than those in the comparison group to be in employment, and if in employment their earnings are no higher than those in the comparison group.
Meager et al. (2003) studied this question.