Youth Unemployment, Labour Market Programmes and Health


Book Description

Reviews studies which explore how unemployment may adversely affect health and how poor health may lead to unemployment. Investigates the potential impact of labour market policies on the employment and health of young people. Discusses the implications for research in this area.




Youth and the Crisis


Book Description

The recent recession has led to an ongoing crisis in the youth labour market in Europe. This timely book deals with a number of areas related to the context, choices and experiences of young people, the consequences of which resonate throughout their lives. The focus of the contributions to this volume is on issues which, whilst undoubtedly important, have thus far received less attention than they arguably deserve. The first part of the book is concerned with issues related to education and training, covering matters such as the role of monopsony in training, the consequences of over-education, and the quality of educational institutions from primary to tertiary. The second part is primarily concerned with the long-term consequences of short-term choices and experiences including contributions on health-related choices, health consequences later in life, factors affecting the home-leaving decision, as well as an analysis of the increasing intergenerational transmission of inequality; a trend which accelerated during the recession. The last part of the book deals with issues related to youth unemployment and NEET – the direct consequence of the recession. This book contains a number of innovative analyses reporting significant findings that contrast with standard models. Some of the more interesting results directly contradict conventional wisdom on a number of topics from the importance of monopsony in training markets to the importance of transitory income changes on consumption of addictive goods. This book is suitable for those who study labor economics, political economy as well as employment and unemployment.




Youth Unemployment and Health


Book Description

Youth unemployment has become one of the most crucial social problems in many EU countries. In the 90s it can be observed that in most Western countries, the rate of youth unemployment have risen dramatically, in some of these countries the unemployment problem can be considered primarily a problem of refused entry to the labour market for members of the younger generation. This development increases the risk of psychosocial impairment to the individuals affected as well as to the social fabric in general. The present volume draws attention to the health effects of long-term youth unemployment in six European countries. It is based upon the results of an international research project (Youth Unemployment and Social Exclusion: Dimensions, Subjective Experiences, and Innovative Institutional Responses in Six Countries of the EU) (YUSEDER) conducted in the framework of the research programme Targeted Socio-Economic Research (TSER) of the European Commission. Partners with different scientific backgrounds (health psychology, public health research, psychiatry, industrial sociology, medical sociology) from six European countries participated in this project. The contributions in this volume illustrate an initial approach to analysing and comparing empirical evidence on youth unemployment and health from a comparative perspective for three Northern European countries (Sweden, Germany, Belgium) and for three Southern European countries (Spain, Italy, Greece). For each country a specific national report is presented. The comparative section describes and attempts to explain the similarities and dissimilarities between countries having rather diverse historical and social understandings of being in and out of work for young people.




Tackling Youth Unemployment


Book Description

Youth have always had higher unemployment rates – about twice or more than the average – as they are usually the last to be hired in an expansion and the first to be let go in a recession. In addition, young people engage in extensive job searching in their early years, and this can imply considerable job churning as both youth and employers look for a good match. This highlights the importance of facilitating the school-to-work transition and having early interventions to assist such youth before negative conditions set in. It also highlights the potential importance of determining those young people most “at risk” of long-term unemployment, and of targeting or streaming them into programmes that will yield the largest incremental net benefits given their characteristics. Unemployed youth without previous work experience often are not eligible for unemployment insurance benefits when they first enter the labour market. When they do receive job search assistance, they often face a bewildering array of programmes that are available to assist them, often with little guidance to help them select the programs that best meet their needs. Consequently, ensuring that today’s youth do not become a “lost generation” is an urgent matter. George Bernard Shaw once said that it is too bad that “youth is wasted on the young”, implying that youth do not realize the opportunities they have as youth and only see them as they get older. There is a danger, however, that many of today’s youth may be never have those opportunities and hence not even see them with hindsight. This book and others in the ADAPT Labour Studies Book-Series are intended to deal with these challenges, to make sure that youth is not wasted on the young.




Youth Unemployment and Social Exclusion in Europe


Book Description

With contributions from leading experts in the field, this book presents the findings of the first comparative study of unemployed youth in Europe.




Youth Employment and the Future of Work


Book Description

"Young people are particularly vulnerable to fluctuations in economic trends. Youth employment is therefore high on the policy agenda of those concerned with promoting social inclusion. While youth-targeted employment policies tend to combine both demand-side and supply-side approaches, it is important to recognise that traditional notions of "work" have more recently been challenged and reconceptualised. The old assumptions about gender roles, "job security" and "planned careers" have thus been transformed by the profound economic and social changes of recent decades. The essays collected here were developed from papers first delivered at a research seminar on youth employment organised by the partnership between the Council of Europe and the European Commission in the field of youth. They represent a diverse and, at times, provocative collection of analytic snapshots of the position of young people on the European labour market. What emerges is a shared commitment to finding flexible responses to economic globalisation and a concomitant concern for promoting the rights, interests and welfare of young people in both training placement and in the workplace."--P. [4] of cover.




Youth Unemployment and Joblessness


Book Description

Youth unemployment and joblessness are major issues for national governments and international organizations across the globe. In this respect, the school-to-work transition challenge is increasingly raising the interest of companies, education and training institutions, families and young people themselves, who are often involved in precarious and illegal forms of employment, in many countries of the world. In the field of industrial and labour relations, the school-to-work perspective seems particularly suitable for policy formulation and assessment: the broad and complex range of tools, strategies and policies for enabling youth training and their access to the labour market is deserving of a closer analysis at an international level in a time when jobless recovery threatens national economies. The ADAPT LABOUR STUDIES BOOK-SERIES has in connection been set up with a view to achieving a better understanding of the causes, consequences and possible responses to the issue in a global dimension through an interdisciplinary and comparative approach.




Youth Unemployment and State Intervention


Book Description

In the early 1980s, against the background of chronic unemployment in Britain, the particular plight of young people had come to be identified as a subject for special concern. Anxieties were expressed, as they were in the 1930s, as a twin concern for a waste of the nation’s resources and for the demoralization of youth, leading potentially to anti-social behaviour. Originally published in 1982, this volume of essays identifies a number of key issues in the pattern of state response to youth unemployment which had evolved in the inter-war and post-war periods. The contributors discuss a number of related themes, such as how the problem has been defined and created as a kind of ‘moral panic’, and how contemporary measures recapitulate the rhetoric and policies of pre-war interventions. They examine the relationship between youth unemployment measures and the education sector, the responses of the trade unions, and also consider how young people themselves respond to special programmes. A critical assessment is made of the further education elements in the special measures: in particular, the question is asked: do these young people need ‘social and life skills’ training? The book charts the changing nature of the state response to youth unemployment since 1974, and stresses throughout the inappropriate nature of ‘temporary’ amelioration of a long-term, even permanent, problem.




Health Effects of the New Labour Market


Book Description

The background for the international research conference “Health Hazards and Challenges in the New Working Life” was the emerging questions concerning the health and social effects of the rapid changes in the labour market leading to increasing long-term unemployment, temporary employment and irregular employment contracts. We knew that other countries have had this development at the labour market for a much longer time than Sweden has and it seemed a good idea to invite interested researchers and practitioners to an international seminar to share the relevant research findings and discuss future research needs. Thus, the first international, interdisciplinary research conference on “Health Hazards and Challenges in the New Working Life” was arranged in Stockholm during the last year of the 2nd millennium but was directed towards the foreseen development during the next millennium. We were very pleased that more than 200 participants came to a cold and dark country just after New Year’s Eve, and that it was a truly multidisciplinary setting. It became very obvious that it is necessary for the occupational health and safety research community to reach out to the public health research community as well as to the social and political sciences in order to understand the determinants and to perform comprehensive analyses at several levels in this new labour market situation.




Youth Unemployment


Book Description