In December 2025, Australia became the first country to ban youth under 16 years old from holding accounts on major social media platforms, a policy now under consideration in more than a dozen countries and in numerous states. Because social media use is inherently social, the effectiveness of...

This paper examines how an adolescent's relative socioeconomic status (SES) within their school influences their socioemotional development and well-being. Although peer effects on academic outcomes are well-documented, less is known about how an individual's socioeconomic rank among peers...

Children form social ties along dimensions of gender and race/ethnicity, and thus may differ greatly in exposure to peer health and also in reactivity to peer influence. This paper estimates heterogeneity in the peer effects of obesity along dimensions of gender, race/ethnicity, and...

Food coma, also known as postprandial somnolence, is a commonly cited reason for experiencing reduced alertness during mid-afternoon worldwide. By using exogenous variation in the timing of tests and, hence, by extension, plausibly exogenous variation in the temporal distance between an...

Drawing on nationally representative UK data, we explore the association of parental health and disability with mental distress and non-cognitive skills development of adolescents; both self-reported and more objectively measured bio-measures are used to capture parental health. Overall, we...

We implement a randomized controlled trial in a low-income context to investigate whether students in lower-secondary school acquire information about potential career paths more effectively if this information is preceded by a task that allows students to explore their own interests and if the...

Although hope and aspirations are increasingly considered to be both intrinsically and instrumentally valuable, quantitative evidence on the formation of these factors is limited. Using data from a sample of educated youth in Myanmar, this paper documents the relationship between various sources...

This paper explores the post-grant phase of the Business Acceceleration for Youth (BA4Y) programme implemented at the Malawi University of Science and Technology (MUST), highlighting the transition from grant-supported initiatives to institutionalised innovation education and business growth for...

This paper examines the dynamics of life satisfaction for a sample of young Irish adults before, during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. Using longitudinal data from the Child cohort of the Growing Up in Ireland (GUI) survey we analyse changes in the Cantril ladder measure of life satisfaction...

This article assesses the impact of parents working from home on children's academic performance in high school. Using French data, we draw on the fact that, within each major social group, not all families have been equally exposed to the recent rise in work from home (WFH), depending on the...

This study investigates how entrepreneurship education delivered through school cooperatives can reduce early school dropout rates and prevent the NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) phenomenon. Drawing on social capital theory, we address the following research questions: (1) What...

This study evaluates a randomized trial in Côte d’Ivoire, implemented by the Africa Gender Innovation Lab (GIL), which tested whether varying the content and recipient of SMS reminders can increase enrollment among young people who had pre-registered for a skills training program. Messages...

This paper investigates child poverty in Germany through a multidimensional lens, combining Sen’s Capability Approach and Bourdieu’s Capital Theory to develop a adapted Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) for children above 11 and youth aged 17. Drawing on data from the German...

This paper examines peer mental health's influence on adolescents' wellbeing, academic performance, and behavior. Using friends-of-friends as an instrument, I find that a one standard deviation increase in friends' mental unwellness is associated with a 0.67 standard deviation increase in one's...

This study examines the state of decent work in the West Bank, focusing on the intersection of labor market conditions, gender disparities, and the fragility of legal enforcement. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines labor force surveys, qualitative interviews, and institutional...

Despite making up a relatively low share of the population, adolescents account for a disproportionately high incidence of registered offenders. An innovative empirical approach finds causal evidence that a reform of citizenship law has a significant impact on reducing youth crime. Birthright...

Global reports suggest a decline in social connection, trust and wellbeing may be occurring for young people. Using data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, this study investigates the relationship between social capital and subjective wellbeing among...

Objective: The study aims to evaluate the internal validity of a scale measuring cultural traits in relation to Hofstede's framework and to identify the individual cultural characteristics of young people across three countries: Poland, South Korea, and the United States. Research Design &...

We evaluate the Education Maintenance Allowance, a large conditional cash transfer scheme that paid low-income teenagers in England to remain in education beyond age 16. Using the staggered national roll-out of the programme and linked administrative data tracking education, earnings, welfare...

Platformisation and the growing adoption of AI-driven systems have intensified pervasive data extraction and appropriation that bring distinct harms for both individuals and societies at large. Yet, little is known about how distinct harm perceptions shape citizens' preferences for different...

This study examines the career aspirations of economically disadvantaged Filipino children participating in the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), the Philippines' flagship conditional cash transfer program. Using data from 9,958 children aged 10 to 25 collected through the Fourth Wave...

This research addresses two key challenges in cultural tourism. First, youths aged 18-25 show limited interest in cultural tourism due to outdated presentation methods and cultural products. Second, there is insufficient understanding of how to create culturally authentic products for youths...

Discrimination, defined as the unfair treatment of groups based on intrinsic characteristics, has pervasive and long-lasting consequences for the individuals who experience it. Previous research has found that individuals who experience discrimination have worsened physical and mental health...

I study the impact of school social workers on youth crime and education. As a political reaction to a school rampage, a large German state introduced funding for school social workers, resulting in a strong increase in their numbers. Using the spatial and temporal variation in its...

We investigate how information frictions affect the efficacy of contraception provision programs. We study a Costa Rican initiative that combined free access to long-acting reversible contraceptives and a tailored information campaign to correct for baseline misinformation. Using administrative...

Do high-stakes exams widen gender gaps in academic performance? We study this question in early adolescence using Italy's lower-secondary exit exam. A 2017 reform removed the national standardized test from the final grade while preserving the requirement to take the same test, reducing stakes...

While the popularity of eSports continues to grow, academic research on the topic remains limited, particularly in the African context. To address this scholarly limitation, this study applied the stimulus-organism-response theory to determine the influence of flow and competitiveness on young...

Although hope and aspirations are increasingly considered to be both intrinsically and instrumentally valuable, quantitative evidence on the formation of these factors is limited. Using data from a sample of educated youth in Myanmar, this paper documents the relationship between various sources...

The gender gap in competitiveness is argued to explain gender differences in later life outcomes, including career choices and the gender wage gap. In experimental settings, a prevalent explanation attributes this gap to males being more (over)confident than females (we call this the...