Youth in the Labour Market: Does Inequality of Opportunity Matter? The Experience of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Madagascar

Atif Awad () and M. Azhar Hussain
Additional contact information
Atif Awad: University of Sharjah

Journal of the Knowledge Economy, 2023, vol. 14, issue 3, No 43, 3176-3202

Abstract: Abstract We investigate how factors beyond an individual’s control determine the youth’s status in the labour market. The factors include gender, age, residential areas, parental education, and parental occupation. We differentiate between three main labour market categories, which are employed, unemployed, and inactive. Additionally, how the mentioned factors determine the allocation of employed people among various sectors is also examined. We use descriptive statistical techniques, regressions, and the propensity score matching model based on the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Madagascar data gathered from the school-to-work transition survey carried out by the International Labour Organization in 2015. The descriptive statistical results show that the educational attainment of the youth and their parents is disappointing, and most of the youth engage in private or family businesses. The propensity score matching technique results discover that inequality of opportunity can be a causal explanation for the youth’s labour market status in both countries. The regression approach shows little explanatory power, which implies that youth’s status in the labour market in these countries is mainly attributed to the effort-based inequality and not inequality of opportunity.

Keywords: Youth; Employment; Inactivity; Government sector; Propensity score matching (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s13132-022-00902-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:jknowl:v:14:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s13132-022-00902-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/13132

DOI: 10.1007/s13132-022-00902-5

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of the Knowledge Economy is currently edited by Elias G. Carayannis

More articles in Journal of the Knowledge Economy from Springer, Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().