Understanding NEET status in Cameroon and Chad: determinants and gender disparities

Christian Zamo Akono and Liliane Odette Medjo Obia

International Journal of Manpower, 2025, vol. 46, issue 3, 492-511

Abstract: Purpose - This study aims to examine the association between Not in Employment, Education, or Training (NEET) status and a set of individual and household socioeconomic factors, including potential gender-based variations, for young people aged 15–34 years in Cameroon and Chad. Design/methodology/approach - Using data from the 2021 Survey on Youths’ Transition to the Labour Market in Francophone Africa, logistic regressions were conducted to identify the determinants of NEET status, and the multivariate decomposition for nonlinear response models was employed to examine gender disparities in the likelihood of being NEET. Findings - In Cameroon, the likelihood of being NEET is linked to factors such as age, being female, being in a couple, having dependent children, financial difficulties and urban residency. In Chad, NEET status is associated with higher education, age, being female, being in a couple and having dependent children, but decreases with secondary education, technical education and balancing work and study. Gender disparities in NEET status are largely explained by individual characteristics, accounting for 56.16% of the disparity in Cameroon and 73.72% in Chad. The main contributors in Cameroon are higher education, marital status and having children, while in Chad they are secondary and technical education, studying STEM, age, marital status and having children. Originality/value - This paper makes two key contributions: first, it is the pioneering study on the determinants of entering the NEET category in sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on individual characteristics; second, it offers the first comprehensive decomposition of factors driving gender disparities in the likelihood of being NEET.

Keywords: Young people; NEET; Logistic regression; Gender disparities; Multivariate decomposition for nonlinear response models; Cameroon; Chad; J15; J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:ijmpps:ijm-12-2023-0744

DOI: 10.1108/IJM-12-2023-0744

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Manpower is currently edited by Professor Adrian Ziderman

More articles in International Journal of Manpower from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().