Since the onset of the recession in the late 2000s, youth "Not in Education, Employment or Training" (NEET) have received much public attention. Some examples of policymakers’ concerns include the long-term effects of NEET status on educational and labour market outcomes, health problems among NEETs, and the effects of a large NEET population on social cohesion in European societies. However, the statistical indicator NEET covers a multitude of different life situations and the use of the concept has received well-deserved critique for this ambiguity. Moreover, discussions on NEETs have sometimes tended to focus on youth and their individual choices, thus clouding the impact of structural constraints and unequal opportunities leading to this situation.
A recent study by Joonas Pitkänen, Hanna Remes, Heta Moustgaard and Pekka Martikainen from the Population Research Unit at University of Helsinki investigates childhood determinants of NEET status after compulsory school in Finland. The study uses administrative register data on a 20% sample of Finnish households with under-15-year-old children in 2000. The data includes information on sociodemographic characteristics (Statistics Finland), hospital care (National Institute for Health and Welfare) and prescription medication (Social Insurance Institute) as well as information on out-of-home placements (National Institute for Health and Welfare). The authors follow children born 1986–1993 from birth to the age of 18. A broad range of indicators including adverse childhood experiences as well as childhood socioeconomic background factors were taken into account when modeling data.
Their results show that both adverse childhood experiences and childhood socioeconomic resources increase the risk of being NEET, suggesting that opportunities during the transition to adulthood are not equal among Finnish youth. Moreover, the impact of socioeconomic factors seems to be stronger than the impact of adverse childhood experiences. In fact, these differences in socioeconomic resources seem to explain most of the increase in the risk of NEET status due to adverse childhood experiences. The study also shows that among boys, parental education can have a stronger impact on being NEET than among girls.
The authors suggest that to reduce inequality in opportunities after compulsory schooling, supportive measures for children from disadvantaged backgrounds should be implemented early, before the end of compulsory school. Preventive actions might be more effective than measures designed for youth during the NEET period. Moreover, increasing the mandatory age of school-leaving, decreasing financial costs of studying, as well as diversifying the options to attain secondary education might smooth youth transitions to education and employment.