Across many countries, young adults face a persistent skills mismatch, with firms reporting difficulty finding candidates with adequate soft skills. In Rwanda, young women face particularly acute barriers to securing employment. This study evaluates a two-week intensive soft skills training...

Context: VET programmes in most countries are organised as a combination of learning in schools and learning in workplaces, with elements of workplace learning ranging from a few hours of job shadowing to longer duration internships or full apprenticeships. While there is no doubt about the...

This paper studies the long-term impacts of dual apprenticeships on youth employment in a high-informality labor market. A Randomized Controlled Trial in Côte d'Ivoire with four follow-up surveys collected over seven years shows that dual apprenticeships have sustained impacts: youth earnings...

We examine the impact of generative AI on the youth labor market in Finland by replicating the key analyses of Brynjolfsson et al. (2025) with comprehensive population-level data. Contrary to the US findings, we find no systematic displacement effects linked to AI exposure among youth in...

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...

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...

Summer Youth Employment Programs are known to have significant impacts on youth outcomes based on lotteries from oversubscribed programs. But most cities cannot use a lottery design due to heterogeneity across youth and jobs. How can programs achieve efficiency and equity under alternative...

This study aims to evaluate whether key factors related to homelessness and the utilisation of support services by homeless youth are associated with their employment outcomes. Data from 402 young people living in 21 housing accommodation buildings across three urban cities in England are used...

Using Israeli data, we establish that the interaction between school entrance age (SEA) policy and youth employment laws increases high school dropout rates among students who start school older - particularly males. This is because these students become eligible for employment at an earlier...

This innovative study breaks new territory in two key areas: it puts VET centre stage as a key intervention to support NEETs and presents the first mixed-methods research effort to collect and analyse evidence on the profile and role of NEETs teachers in Greece. It fills a significant knowledge...

This paper evaluates a hiring subsidy for lower-educated youths in Flanders (Belgium) that reduced labour costs by approximately 13% for a period of two years, starting in 2016. Using a donut Regression Discontinuity Design, we find no evidence that the subsidy improved the job finding rate of...

Using detailed administrative data from Spain, we characterize how a first work experience in an employee-owned firm (EOF) versus a conventional firm can affect workers’ careers. We find that workers’ exposure to EOFs at the time of entry reduces daily wages by 8% over the first 15 years in...

This study analyzes, for the first time, the effect of increases in the minimum wage on the labor market outcomes of working age adults with cognitive disabilities, a vulnerable and low-skilled sector of the actual and potential labor pool. Using data from the American Community Survey...

This paper provides the first experimental evidence on the long-term effects of work-study programs, leveraging a randomized lottery design from a national program in Uruguay. Participation leads to a persistent 11 percent increase in formal labor earnings seven years after the program, driven...

Social interactions between young and senior colleagues might have consequences for union membership uptake of young workers, thus influencing public policies on unions. We apply Norwegian administrative register data to test this claim about the influence of social interactions on unionization,...

Young people in Bhutan face rising rates of exclusion from employment, education, or training, and limited access to quality jobs, despite gains in education. Entrepreneurship is often viewed as an alternative pathway, but most youth-led ventures remain necessity-driven, informal, and...

Objective: In this article, our aim is to identify and assess changes in the behaviour of young women taking into account the changes regarding gender and cultural roles. Research Design & Methods: Analysing seven-day diary data (N = 139), we examined the average duration of the 12 evaluated...

Materialism, characterized by prioritizing material possessions over intrinsic values, has been shown to negatively impact well-being, social behavior, and economic activities. However, limited research addresses interventions to reduce materialism in non-WEIRD societies, particularly in the...

The Charter on Youth and Democracy puts forward concrete recommendations relating to the democratic participation of young people to social, political and civic life at three levels of governance: the local and regional level; the national level; and the European level. It strives to build and...