Вестник Витебского
государственного
технологического
университета

Abstract

The NEET youth group (young people aged 15–24 not in education, employment or training) represents a valuable reserve for employment growth and for providing of the national economy organisations with personnel of the required qualifications. The continuation of unfavourable demographic trends (depopulation, ageing) actualizes the task of finding ways to mitigate the NEET-youth problem. The importance of studying the characteristics of the formation and ways to reduce the NEET-youth rate also lies in the fact that this indicator is directly related to the human capital quality and the sustainability of socio-economic development. The aim of the research is to identify and quantitatively assess the macrofactors shaping the NEET youth phenomenon, which collectively integrate the influence of institutional measures and specific areas of socio-economic policy on the dynamics of the NEET youth rate. The empirical basis of the research are data from the World Bank, Eurostat, OECD, ILOSTAT, Human Development Reports, and World Happiness Reports. The methodological basis comprises methods of analysis and synthesis, comparison, deduction, modelling, and correlation-regression analysis. Using correlation-regression analysis based on data from 29 countries, the statistically significant impact on the spread of the NEET youth phenomenon (the NEET youth rate) of the investment in education was identified, and the positive impact of the average length of education increase on reducing the NEET youth share was confirmed. An important conclusion is the empirical evidence of the volunteering and charity as additional factors that reduce the risk of young NEET status. The developed models can be used for NEET indicators forecasting and quantitatively determine the most significant factors of the studied phenomenon dynamics. The conducted research expands the understanding of the factors shaping the NEET youth rate and its cross-country peculiarities, indicating possible directions for policy measures developing to reduce the NEET-youth rate.

The NEET-youth phenomenon: peculiarities of prevalence and factors of formation (a cross-country quantitative analysis)