Questions and Answers: General

1. Why is it important to address the needs of youth now?
2. What are the main challenges facing youth in poor countries?
3. What are the risks involved with having large numbers of young people?
4. Are young people in poor countries today better or worse off than their parents' generation?
5. What is the impact of globalization on today's young people?
6. What should the role of a country's Ministry of Youth be?
7. Do you think this report could actually influence young people's behavior?
8. Do you expect young people themselves to read this report?
9. Can the creative and impulsive energy of young people be productively directed to support development?
10. Does the report include all views expressed in the consultations?
11. What does the report say about the role of youth service organizations?

1. Why is it important to address the needs of youth now?

It is important to address the needs of the youth now because of the potential of a demographic dividend and progress made with the basics in the developing world.

Most developing countries have a growing share of people of working age-they now have a young population of 1.3 billion aged 12 to 24. If they can educate and employ these growing numbers productively, they could significantly boost growth rates and reduce poverty. It is estimated that in the East Asia tiger economies, which were among the first to experience this increase in share of the labor force, between 25 to 40 percent of higher growth was attributed to this fact alone. There may be the opportunity for this kind of growth in other developing countries.

Many developing countries have made progress with the basics. For example, primary school enrollment rates in low-income countries outside of China and India rose from 50 percent in 1970 to 88 percent in 2000. Infant mortality declined over the same period from 10 percent to 6.5 percent. It is time to think of the next generation of investments in youth. Now you have primary school leavers, what is next for them, and are countries and young people prepared for secondary school and beyond? In health, are countries and young people prepared for the new diseases that young people confront, for example HIV/AIDS, as they begin to enter a period where they start sexual activity?

 

2. What are the main challenges facing youth in poor countries?

Young people have many challenges-in acquiring skills, finding jobs, and staying healthy.

Acquiring Skills

Many of them lack the most basic skill - literacy. There are 130 million young people aged 15-24 are illiterate in developing countries (mostly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa). Even if they have gone to school- primary enrollment rates are up everywhere - many of them have learned little. In countries like Ghana and Zambia nearly half of girls 15-24 cannot read a simple sentence even after a full cycle of primary school (6 grades). The average 15 year old from a developing country scores 20 percent less than a student from a rich country on a range of skills from reading to mathematics to problem solving.

Many young people do not go to secondary school. So they have little chance of acquiring the higher skills that lead to better paying jobs. Take a country like Indonesia which has made huge strides with primary education. Children from rich and poor households are pretty much likely to complete primary school, but when it comes to secondary school, youngsters from poor households are 30-40 percent less likely to enrol in secondary school.

Finding Jobs

Young people everywhere find it difficult to find employment. Yet, finding a job is very important to building skills - important skills are built and honed on the job. Unemployment rates for young people in rich countries are 2-3 times that of adults. In many developing countries, the difference can be larger. In South Asia, unemployment among young men aged 20-24 is 5-7 times that of men aged 40-49. Young people make up about a quarter of the work force world wide but nearly half the unemployed.

Staying Healthy

Young people confront many health risks, such as HIV/AIDS, as this is the age when sexual activity begins. Less than half of 15-24 year old girls know how to avoid HIV in countries as diverse as the Philippines, Benin, Nepal and Morocco. Over half of 5 million new HIV infections every year are contracted by those who are 15-24, the majority young women and girls. Young people acquire other habits which will be costly to their health in the long term. Tobacco use is on the increase in developing countries. In Indonesia smoking among 15-19 year olds rose from 32 percent in 1993 to 43 percent in 2000. There are 13 million injecting drug users in the world, nearly 80 percent in developing and transition economies and mostly young. Being overweight is rapidly becoming more prevalent in low and middle income countries. Outside of South Asia, more young women are likely to be overweight than underweight.

 

3. What are the risks involved with having large numbers of young people?

It is possible to view this large young population as a threat - after all, providing health, education and services to the young can be costly, and the presence of large numbers of young people can place strains on labor markets and institutions. But we view it as a tremendous opportunity - because the transformation of this group into active and productive citizens offers enormous potential gains to these economies, which can yield even greater dividends because young people will support dependents in the future.

To make the most of their young people governments need to make sure that there are opportunities for schooling and work and young people are informed about their health. Some of the things they need to do - especially in terms of increasing access to schooling and its quality - will require more resources. There is no getting away from that. The donor community can help the poorest countries that wish to make more opportunities available to the young.

But many of the measures require not so much financial as political capital. In many countries in MENA where the public sector offers higher wages and more generous benefits, educated youth remain out of work while queuing for jobs in the public sector. There is also the expectation that unemployed graduates will be hired in the civil service. Governments can signal their willingness to move from job guarantees to a more competitive process for entry into the public sector, by making the application process more merit-based. In Turkey the requirement of passing a set of examinations to apply for a government post shortened the queue for public sector jobs and shifted graduates to the pursuit of other careers.

 

4. Are young people in poor countries today better or worse off than their parents' generation?

Young people in poor countries have benefited from the enormous push all over the world to increase primary schooling and improve child health. So this generation has more years of schooling and has survived more childhood disease than their parents' generation.

But young people are also challenged in ways that are different from earlier generations as well. Today's world demands more than basic education. In fact, wages for those with university education are now much higher than in the past. In Ghana in the 1980s the earnings of a university graduate were around the same as a primary school graduate. Now they are 3 to 4 times that of primary school graduate. What this means is that young people require more education than their parents did. Young people are also confronting diseases - such as HIV/AIDS - which were not around 30 years ago when their parents were growing up. This means they need to be much more aware of the future health consequences of their actions.

There is another sense in which young people face different challenges. Because access to radios, televisions and new media such as the internet are so much greater, young people are more aware of what is going on in the world and possibly have higher expectations than their parents. This is sometimes called the revolution of rising expectations. Some anthropological work done in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro looked at how the children of favela dwellers fared over a 30 year period (1969-1999). It found that although 85 percent of children had more education than their parents less than 60 percent claimed to have better jobs than their parents - possibly because what young people aspire to in life had changed over the period.

 

5. What is the impact of globalization on today's young people?

Young people are now exposed to more information from more sources than was possibly the case in the past. In the three years between 2000 and 2003 developing countries added more than a quarter of a billion internet users and half a billion mobile phone users. We know from special surveys undertaken for this report that 15-24 year olds dominate the use of the internet. In China more than 40 percent of all users of the internet fall in this age group, in Indonesia 70 percent. There are now more internet users than newspaper readers in most developing regions except South Asia.

This use of the internet has pros and cons. Parents unfamiliar with the new technology and not present when it is being used have little ability to protect young people from some of the dangers. In early December 2005 three of the top five search terms on the internet (and 68 of the top 200) were sexual. This raises the question of how to protect young people while not blocking access to useful content - for many young people the internet is an important source of information on sexual and reproductive health but unfiltered searches can also expose young people to pornography.

Outsourcing is another thing that is affecting young people. Business process outsourcing employed nearly 700,000 people in India alone in 2004. One estimate suggests that 160 million jobs could be carried out remotely. Many of the beneficiaries are likely to be the young - the average call center employee in India is 23 years old.

 

6. What should the role of a country's Ministry of Youth be?

The main role of the Ministry of Youth should be to safeguard the interests of young people. Most of the policies that affect young people are determined in other ministries - the ministry of education sets education policy, the ministry of health - health policy and so on. But someone needs to ask the question -are these policies together serving the interests of young people well? If not, what can be done?

In many countries, labor market regulations are designed to protect, and quite rightly, those who are already in the labor market. But this can hurt the prospects of those who have yet to enter - such as the young. In Sri Lanka, severance pay is very high - over twice as high as in other Asian countries and three times as high as in Latin America for a worker with 20 years of service. This makes employers reluctant to hire new workers who will qualify for similar entitlements making it hard for young people to get on the job ladder.

In many countries the civil service hiring and compensation structure has the effect of making young educated people queue for public sector jobs. These issues - which are the unintended consequences of national policy but get in the way of the young being integrated into the labor force and acquiring skills on the job - are the sorts of things that should be raised and addressed.

7. Do you think this report could actually influence young people's behavior?

The report should give plenty of examples for governments and others of effective youth programs and many ideas for policy makers and the private sector on how "youth-friendly" policies can be shaped.

Young people themselves are capable of making a difference and were consulted widely for their views on the issues examined in the report. There is a lot that can be done to help young people become better decision makers, and in the event that bad decisions are made, to recover from them. That's why the report emphasizes capabilities and second chances.

Capabilities

Information and incentives are important so that people can make the right decisions for their future health, education and jobs. Governments have a responsibility to make sure that young people and their families and communities can make the best choices and invest in themselves. School based sex-education has been found to be very effective in many contexts. In Kenya, a program providing young girls with information about the higher prevalence of HIV infection among older men helped reduce the incidence of intergenerational sex and significantly reduced pregnancies among girls-in a setting where age-mixing is quite common. There is no evidence that sex education increases sexual activity among youth. Both Cambodia and Thailand have contained the spread of HIV/AIDS partly through structured information campaigns that worked through media and information providers in all sectors of the economy.

Second Chances

Second chance training programs for out-of school youth generally do not pass cost-benefit tests. But when training is provided as part of a comprehensive package of services which gives recipients information and incentives to find jobs - as in the case of the Jovenes training programs in Latin America - they have better outcomes.

 

8. Do you expect young people themselves to read this report?

The report is directed at policy makers, the corporate sector and the NGOs that represent youth. We think young people are interested - so we have a spotlight. We also have a DVD, which will be web-streamed for viewing.

9. Can the creative and impulsive energy of young people be productively directed to support development?

Of course! While researching and writing this report, examples abounded of creative approaches young people had piloted to contribute to development. For example, young university students in Chile started a program to build for low income families and help them make a living. Projects like Un Techo para mi Pais in Chile are shining examples of how young people contribute to reducing poverty. In Eastern Europe, university students have taken on the responsibility for fighting corruption in higher education, which is laudable and bodes well for their future roles in society.

Young people are problem solvers, and this report recognizes them as critical stakeholders because their voice is needed if they are to access and create their own opportunities. Each of the five transitions (education, health, employment, families, and citizenship) considered in the report includes the role of youth decision making, and there is much that young people can do for themselves. The spotlight on youth-led development recognizes that young people can not only solve their own problems but can also take active roles in solving development challenges. The donor spotlight in the report also explicitly calls on donors to create more opportunities for youth leadership.

 

10. Does the report include all views expressed in the consultations?

This question has come up in previous World Development Report consultations, so before the team began consultations, it circulated a Background Note on Consultations among all partners and interlocutors. This document was posted to the WDR 2007 website and outlined the Roles and Parameters of the consultations, where it was explained that it is the report team that takes responsibility for integrating and synthesizing the many (and often conflicting) comments received and that, while a broad range of perspectives should be considered and analyzed in the preparation of the reports, the final output is that of a team and will reflect the judgments of that team.

It is important to note that the consultations and the report are only the beginning of the dialogue on this topic. The World Development Report, although an important research document, is not the culmination of the World Bank’s dialogue with youth organizations. The team hopes that the World Bank, its partners, and others will leverage the issues raised in the report to improve youth policies and the lives of youth.

 

11. What does the report say about the role of youth service organizations?

The research team members met with and solicited the input of many organizations more than once over the year and explained that the views reflected in the final report and any recommendations would have to be based on the strength of the available evidence. In the case of service organizations, the team found there were very few evaluations of the impact of service organizations. However, while researching and writing this report, the researchers found many examples of creative approaches young people had piloted to contribute to development, and there are many substantive examples of how youth organizations and young people themselves can contribute to development, which are raised in the youth spotlight on youth-led development and also in Chapters 3 and 7 of the report.