Professor Sue Maguire is Honorary Professor at the IPR

‘Any evidence that we have on the NEET group is dated. We have pockets to support different types of policy development, but no way do we have good evidence…’

- (Policymaker)[1]

This admission by a policymaker about the dearth of evidence on which to base policy targeting those young people, currently numbering 857,000[2] according to official UK figures, who are not in education, employment or training (NEET), highlights an area crying out for substantial research and investigation.

A contested term

We have become very familiar with the term ‘NEET’ and its widespread application to quantify levels of social and economic exclusion among young people. Leaving aside the suspicion that NEET became the preferred term partly because of our love of acronyms and partly because it was less emotionally charged than Status Zero, which was the original classification in the UK, it is important to remember that it was originally applied to 16- and 17-year-olds who could no longer be classified as ‘unemployed’ due to legislative changes. Since then, NEET has become the term used not just in the UK, but internationally, to refer to a much wider age cohort of young people (16-24 in the UK).

But how useful is the NEET label in identifying the true volume of people in this category? Significant numbers of those aged 16-18 are not identified as NEET because their destinations are not recorded, and large numbers of those over 18 who are defined as NEET fail to register for welfare or other types of support in the UK. Thus, the numbers in the claimant count are much smaller than those in the overall NEET population, leading to the conclusion that a large number of young people are unsupported by statutory services – why is this? Given the disconnect between the official NEET statistics and policy intervention to track, manage and support the estimated NEET population, perhaps it is time to re-think our application of the term NEET and, crucially, our policy responses to support young people who fall into this overall definition.

Gender differences

Irrespective of the expanded scope of the NEET group, it is apparent that gender differences within the cohort have been neglected in the literature, wider debates and, crucially, policy formation about the NEET group. Data from the January-March quarter of the 2016 Labour Force Survey and the National Online Manpower Information System highlighted differences between NEET females and NEET males. Despite its original purpose, the NEET category now includes young people who are actively seeking work, i.e. the economically active (EA) NEET group, as well as those who are economically inactive (EI), primarily because they have caring and/or domestic responsibilities or are unable to participate in education, employment or training due to long-term ill health. NEET young women outnumbered NEET young men (432,000 to 376,000); 66% of the young women were EI, compared to 43% of the young men; and young people who were NEET and EA were mostly young men (59%).

Differences are also apparent in the types of benefits received by males and females in the NEET and EI group, with young women claiming Income Support (IS) in larger numbers, as a result of caring responsibilities. Most young men in the NEET EI group claim Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) due to illness or disability, with the primary cause being psychological problems. Significant numbers of young women claim ESA for the same reason.

To date, relatively little attention has been paid to young women who are NEET and EI, with a passive acceptance that their ‘caring’ responsibilities sideline them from meaningful support or policy intervention. Reasons for the differences described above need to be explored in greater depth in order to provide evidence on which effective policy initiatives can be introduced. A study currently being undertaken by myself and Young Women’s Trust, with funding from the Barrow Cadbury Trust, is seeking to address some of the gaps and shortcomings in our understanding of what it means to be NEET and EI, and what impact this categorisation has on the lives of young women.

The stakeholders

During the first year of this two-year project, interviews were carried out with ten key experts, including policymakers and academics. In addition, case studies were undertaken in five localities, with local stakeholders who were involved in devising and delivering employment interventions in each area being interviewed. These stakeholders typically included local authorities, Jobcentres, Local Enterprise Partnerships, education and training providers, and voluntary and community sector organisations.

Among these respondents, there was concern about the general acceptance that all young women who are NEET and EI would remain so for long periods of time because of their early motherhood, caring responsibilities or ill-health. Rather, it was felt that this issue required ‘unpacking’ in order to gain more understanding about their needs and requirements. An important finding was the relationship between the type of welfare benefit and intervention that young people receive and their classification as either NEET EI or NEET EA. Young women, who are much more likely than young men to be NEET and EI, typically remain on welfare support for much longer periods than those who are EA, and are also far less likely to receive any form of positive support or intervention. Conversely, the support offered to young people who are actively seeking work and claiming JSA was fiercely criticised for its high levels of sanctioning, unrealistic target-setting and emphasis on removing claimants from the register at the earliest opportunity. It is only the unemployment rate that attracts national media attention and which is scrutinised by national government and by authorities such as the International Labour Office. This difference between the two groups is also reflected in the proportions of their respective claimant counts, with much lower numbers of young people (especially young women) being present in the NEET and EA category.

A preferable approach would involve claimants being provided with targeted and tailored support, instead of being subjected to demanding targets and having the threat of sanctions hanging over them. Concerns were also expressed about the impact of being NEET and EI on young women who were relatively isolated within their households and communities, notably their propensity to suffer from low self-confidence, low self-esteem and, for some, mental health issues. Their detachment from external and independent support and advice could have long-lasting effects on their health and likelihood of future employment. It was reported to be very difficult for local agencies to identify and engage with young women in the NEET and EI group.

For young mothers who are NEET and EI, major barriers to engaging in education, employment or training were deemed to be: affordable childcare; a reluctance to leave their children; access to transport; and appropriate employment and training opportunities.

The issue of the large numbers of young people who do not appear in the system and are effectively ‘unknown’, as mentioned above, was prominent in respondents’ concerns. This was attributed, in part, to cuts to local services which have placed constraints on local authorities’ ability to fulfil the requirement for mapping and tracking young people in Years 12-14. Official statistics show that, in many localities, the ‘unknown’ rates are higher than the NEET rates. This has been exacerbated by the decision to limit any tracking responsibility until the individual’s 18th birthday – when the post-18 group is, perhaps, more in need of monitoring and when the NEET rate significantly rises. Certainly, the absence of any agency or organisation with statutory responsibility for measuring the number of, or addressing the needs of, young people over the age of 18/19 who fail to apply for welfare support was perceived to be of immediate concern.

It was suggested that the reasons for young people’s detachment, leading to their destinations and circumstances being ‘unknown’, included: an unwillingness to cooperate with benefit regulations; fear of statutory bodies; family support which allows them to avoid registration for benefits; the stigma of benefit receipt; and informal or casual working arrangements. Whatever the reasons, this ‘hidden’ NEET population remains largely unquantifiable in many localities and out of the remit of statutory services. Hence, little is known about young people who fall into this category in terms of their characteristics, what has caused their detachment, and any barriers they may face.

The young women, in their own words

The in-depth interviews with ten young women who were NEET and EI provided illuminating insights into their lives and experiences, particularly in relation to their school and post-school experiences, domestic circumstances, money management, and their hopes and aspirations. In this admittedly small sample, those in receipt of IS had caring responsibilities (for their children), while those on ESA suffered from anxiety and depression – one respondent refused to claim welfare support because of her previous negative experiences of dealing with the Job Centre.

Half of the young women were living in their parental home. However, most of them continued to rely on a parent and/or family members for emotional, practical and financial advice and support, irrespective of their circumstances. This included practical help with childcare, food, clothing and personal care costs and assisting with application forms for housing or benefit receipt. Those who lived at their parents’ home contributed minimal amounts to the household budget and, in some cases, their dependence on their family resulted in a reluctance to move out of the family home, because of the perceived risks this posed to their established support networks. A lack of friendship networks, few hobbies and interests, and limited social activities were the norm. Thus, family networks appeared to both insulate and isolate young women from the outside world.

Strikingly, in the face of scarce resources, these young women were adept at managing their finances. This management took different forms, from prioritising expenditure on food, rent, fuel, children’s clothing and toiletries while eking out fortnightly benefit payments, to using loans to buy furniture and other goods from charity shops.

Conclusions

Questions must be raised about our ability to implement effective and appropriate (meaningful) policy interventions when there is clearly a dearth of knowledge and understanding about the NEET group – both in terms of its expanded age cohort, and its inclusion of both the EI and EA groups, which have been shown to have very different needs. Moreover, we have what appears to be a growing army of young people who, under the age of 18, have ‘unknown’ destinations – or who, over the age of 18, may have the classification of being NEET within the statistics, but fail to engage with the welfare system. This leads us to the conclusion that the extension of the umbrella term ‘NEET’ to cover a much wider age cohort has failed to be accompanied by an expansion in understanding about the characteristics and needs of young people who fall into this category; perhaps just as importantly, the wider implications for inclusion and policy responses has not been acknowledged.

Assumptions about young women who are NEET, have caring responsibilities and are likely to remain EI need to be challenged. Is the welfare system and its categorisation of individuals, based on criteria for benefit entitlement, labelling them for the convenience of the system, rather than seeking to design initiatives which engage with them and facilitate their easier access to education, employment and training? Also, while many young women may wish to spend time caring for their children or relatives and may not wish to feel under pressure to (re)join the labour market, this needs to be accompanied with access to appropriate support and intervention when it is required. As it stands, young parents are ‘left alone’ within the benefit system until their youngest child reaches the age of five and are then immediately expected to find work or training if they wish to claim benefits. They need sustained transitional support.

It was evident from the case studies that, at a local level, agencies providing support for the NEET group had established strong and effective partnership working to identify the young people’s needs and to develop local initiatives. More problematic was the short-term nature of funding for these initiatives, and, thus, an absence of long-term strategy or planning. Factors which were perceived to pose a threat to future support for excluded and marginalised young people were: a lack of programmes funded by central government; initiatives being reliant on short-term funding and with a variety of outcome measures; the impending removal of EU structural funds; and a growing reliance on charitable and philanthropic funding to support NEET intervention projects.

The term NEET and the inclusion of the terms EI and EA within it are in urgent need of reappraisal. Perhaps it is time to go back to the drawing board and to question whether ‘NEET’ continues to qualify and quantify the scale of social and economic exclusion among young people in Britain and, if it does, then what policy interventions can be delivered to address the whole population rather than selected sub-groups within it. Finally, questions must be asked about the appropriateness of using access to welfare support facilitated through registration with DWP as an adequate and effective mechanism to engage with young people who are NEET. The existing evidence would suggest that it is failing to meet the needs of many young people, particularly young women.

You can read the Summary Report and Full First Year Report on the Young Women's Trust website here. 

[1]Maguire, S and McKay, E. (2016) Young, Female and Forgotten? London: Young Women’s Trust (p.25)

[2] ONS (2016) Young People Not In Education, Employment or Training (NEET), UK: November 2016. Statistical Bulletin.

Dr Rita Griffiths is Research Programme Lead for the IPR.

“Anyone who thinks Jobcentres are like [those in The Full Monty] … would be pleasantly surprised by visiting [one today],” quipped Damian Green, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in his address to the Conservative Party Conference last week; “no screens, no queues … no sense of sullen despair.” He is right in his observation that Jobcentre Plus offices today look very different from how they did in the 1980s and 1990s, when The Full Monty – along with films like Billy Elliot and Brassed Off – depicted the humiliation and shame wrought on working class men forced to sign-on after being made redundant from jobs in mining, steel and other heavy industries.

It is true that the metal security screens have gone, and dole queues no longer snake out of the doors of benefit offices – which have long since disappeared, along with the traditional industries and breadwinning jobs these men were once employed in. However, it is debatable whether, as claimed by Green, this is down to the transformative power of a modernised and rebranded Jobcentre Plus better equipped to meet the employment needs of ‘ordinary working-class people’ in the post-industrial era. Some would argue it says more about the depersonalised, contracted-out and digitised nature of today’s benefit and employment services – director Ken Loach, for example. His latest offering I, Daniel Blake, for which he won the 2016 Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or, sits uncomfortably alongside Green’s resolutely upbeat account of the changing landscape of government employment support. The protagonist of Loach’s drama, a skilled man in his 50s whose working career is curtailed after he suffers a heart attack, finds himself cut adrift amidst the faceless, ‘digital by design’ bureaucracy of Jobcentre Plus call centres, online benefit processing and the impersonal, one-size-fits-all responses of government-funded advisers. So who is right?

In their own way, both are. Today’s Jobcentre Plus may have upholstered seats, carpets and jaunty, modern graphics – but just try getting past one of those burly security guards if you want help to get a job, or secure better-paid work. Austerity-driven civil service staffing cuts mean that, unless you are an existing benefit claimant required to attend a mandatory appointment with an adviser as a part of your ‘Claimant Commitment’[1], you will likely be turned away – told instead to search for jobs online, or to contact a call centre (using your own mobile and, until recent lobbying persuaded the DWP to change its stance, at a premium call rate). If the security guard allows you entry, you will be directed to a Jobpoint, a touchscreen monitor for online job-hunting – that’s if they haven’t already been removed, along with the free-to-use telephones, as Jobcentre Plus moves inexorably towards full digitisation. In fact, you may be hard-pressed to find a Jobcentre in your local area; in the last five years, scores of them have been closed – including many in rural areas where the nearest alternative may be over an hour’s travel away.

Reduced Jobcentre footfall is of course an undeniable product of the changed nature of work, and online recruitment methods now used by most employers and applicants. However, research is beginning to show that another important factor in the decline of Jobcentre use is the increasingly punitive way in which ‘jobseekers’ and other benefit claimants are dealt with, and a corresponding rise in the incidence of benefit disentitlement and sanctioning.[2] Arrive late for a mandatory appointment, or apply for fewer jobs than is stipulated in your ‘Claimant Commitment’, and you risk being sanctioned. Too many sanctions and you risk losing your benefits altogether, potentially for up to three years.[3] The government claims that sanctions are used infrequently and only as a last resort, but the evidence tells a different story. Research by David Webster from the University of Glasgow found that between 2007 and 2012, one fifth (19%) of all JSA claimants – equivalent to almost a million and a half people – had been subject to sanctions or disallowances.[4] In the context of an increasingly stringent, parsimonious and punitive welfare system, some eligible groups are simply not bothering to claim, further reducing the claimant count.

This brings us to another reason that Jobcentres may seem less desperate places these days: increasing localisation and discretion in the delivery and payment of welfare. In what Frank Field describes as “the most radical departure in welfare since the Atlee government"[5], emergency financial help and other discretionary support intended to prevent the poorest and most vulnerable people in society from falling through the safety net has been devolved from central government to local authorities. This has occurred, it should be noted, with limited public debate about the issues and implications localisation raises. So the queues, over-crowded waiting rooms and sense of despair have not gone away, they have simply relocated – into the burgeoning network of council ‘one-stop shops’ and food banks, where cash-strapped local authorities and volunteer workers struggle to help the growing numbers of claimants and families whose benefits or tax credits have been reduced, stopped or failed to reach their bank accounts for whatever reason.

Even if Green’s rosy vision of the contemporary Jobcentre is right, changes are afoot which may yet see a return to Jobcentre queues and sense of frustration.  Under the most radical and contentious welfare reform measure proposed to date, working people and families claiming Universal Credit means-tested financial help with housing, childcare and living costs will be drawn into a system of conditionality and sanctioning similar to that which currently applies to unemployed and economically inactive claimants. Untried anywhere in the world, a large-scale randomised control trial involving 15,000 low-paid Universal Credit claimants is piloting a new Jobcentre Plus-delivered ‘in-work progression’ service[6] targeted at an entirely new category of customer: low-paid workers and their partners. If rolled out nationally, an additional one million UC claimants will become subject to work conditionality. But here’s the most controversial part: these people will already have jobs. What is more, unless the family contains children under the age of 13, work conditionality requiring regular face-to-face meetings with a Jobcentre adviser will continue until household earnings reach a minimum threshold equivalent to both adults in a couple working 35 hours per week at the national minimum wage. Only parents with authorised caring responsibilities for younger children and other officially exempted groups, such as those with a serious health condition, will have the option to work part-time.

Encouraging low-paid workers to increase their earnings is a laudable policy goal, but when earning more means working longer hours, even in families with young children – and when working for longer is the only way of meeting mandatory conditions for UC receipt – the role of Jobcentre Plus advisers in supporting individuals to progress in work becomes somewhat compromised. Tailored, one-to-one, personalised support from a work coach which underpins the in-work progression service is similarly to be applauded, but progression implies improvement – not just in earnings, which could be achieved simply by getting another low-paid job - but in rates of pay and job prospects. Will customers be helped to access training to improve their earnings potential and jobs offering better terms and conditions, or will they simply be obliged to find more low-paid work? This raises another important question: in whose interests will this employment advice be offered? These already ‘hard working’ customers, employers proffering zero hour contracts, or a government intent on reducing social security expenditure?

Empathetic, individualised support to encourage employment progression runs counter to the work-first culture and general direction of travel that Jobcentre Plus has been moving in for more than a decade. What seems to be missing too is any acknowledgement that, although low earners eligible for means-tested help may represent a new category of customer for Jobcentre Plus, they are not necessarily a different group of people; it is well known that people in poverty and at the bottom end of the earnings distribution often cycle between work and benefits. How realistic is it to think that low-paid workers will be willing to trust the very same advisers who may have imposed a sanction on them during a previous spell of unemployment?

Not simply a cultural and logistical challenge for resource-strapped Jobcentres, through eroding the distinction between being in work and out of work and potentially extending negative representations of benefit claimants to those who already have a job, in-work conditionality also risks obscuring the hitherto strictly demarcated political dividing line between Theresa May’s ‘just managing’ families and welfare-dependent ‘scroungers.’ Hampered by the incremental and chronically delayed rollout of Universal Credit, and a paucity of up-to-date government-commissioned and academic research, only time will tell whether this new vision for Jobcentre Plus will ever be realised.

Notes

[1] Originally designed as part of Universal Credit, with a rollout that has been much slower than anticipated, the ‘Claimant Commitment’ – with its requirement for 35 hours of evidenced job search as a mandatory condition of benefit receipt – also now applies to claimants of jobseekers allowance (JSA) and employment support allowance.
[2] See ESRC-funded research entitled ‘Welfare conditionality: sanctioning, support and behaviour change’ led by the University of York.
[3] A third failure to comply with the most important jobseeking requirements will result in a sanction of 156 weeks.
[4] See D Webster, University of Glasgow
[5] http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmselect/cmworpen/373/37302.htm
[6] http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmselect/cmworpen/549/549.pdf

Professor Sue Maguire is Honorary Professor at the IPR, and is distinguished by her important work on the topics of education, employment and social policy.

Way back in 1988, the Thatcher government, through the Social Security Act, took most young people under the age of 18 out of the unemployment statistics by effectively removing their welfare entitlement. Then, in the 1990s, concerns over the numbers of 16-18 year olds who were not engaging in formal learning, training or employment led to the creation of the term ‘NEET’ (not in education, employment or training) – which sought to capture the size and scale of youth disengagement and social exclusion. In the UK, as in most countries across Europe and other advanced economies, the economic turmoil of the 2000s saw an alarming rise in the levels of young people who are detached from both the labour market and the education and training system. However, rather than the initial focus on a younger cage group, the term ‘NEET’ is now applied internationally to a much wider cohort, typically 16-24-year olds (and, in some countries, up to the age of 29 years), and includes young people in receipt of unemployment benefit as well as to those who claim other types of welfare support or none at all. Despite the official NEET figures in the UK falling over the last couple of years, the numbers remain persistently high. For example, in the period January to March 2016, 865,000 young people (aged 16 to 24 years) were NEET[1]. Of these, 485,000 (56%) were classified to be ‘economically inactive’, with the remainder being ‘unemployed and actively seeking work’.

A striking feature of these statistics is that young women accounted for nearly two thirds (62 per cent) of the economically inactive group, but only 40 per cent of the unemployed group. In the UK, trend data show that young women consistently outnumber young men within the economically inactive group, although the number of economically inactive young men is currently rising. While there have been a number of studies[2] which have segmented the NEET group in terms of young people’s propensity to re-engage with education, employment or training, the prevalence of high economic inactivity rates among young women is under-researched. This perhaps reflects a widespread belief that it is largely attributable to early motherhood or other caring responsibilities and that this group of young people requires little policy attention or intervention because of their domestic commitments. Such assumptions run counter to a body of research evidence which has demonstrated that periods of economic inactivity in early life leave a scar on the individual’s education and employment prospects that persists over time[3].

I am currently collaborating with the Young Women’s Trust (YWT) in undertaking a two-year study (2015-2017), with supported funding from the Barrow Cadbury Trust, to examine economic inactivity rates and why they disproportionately impact on the lives of young women. Early evidence from the research points to the picture being far more complex than the conventional explanations would suggest. It is apparent that there has been a distinct lack of investigation into why so many young women are economically inactive, and at a time when teenage pregnancy rates have reached their lowest levels across England and Wales[4]. While engaging in ‘caring responsibilities’ is undoubtedly a significant factor, evidence about the characteristics of young women who carry this label, where they live, who they are caring for and for how long, as well as data on what types of intervention they attract or require, is thin on the ground. What is clear is that economically inactive women (and men) are assigned to different welfare trajectories than the young unemployed, with those on Employment Support Allowance (ESA), Income Support (IS) and Carer’s Allowance (CA) receiving significantly less intensive support and intervention than those on Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA). Crucially, young people on ESA/IS/CA are not included in the ‘official’ unemployment statistics.

High rates of economic inactivity within the NEET population are not peculiar to the UK. Young women are disproportionately more likely to be NEET and economically inactive in almost all OECD countries, with the exceptions of Luxembourg and Spain. Female NEET inactivity is overwhelmingly linked to child or elder care and/or other domestic/family responsibilities and in some countries, to cultural expectations. As an extreme case, 40 per cent of young girls in Turkey are NEET (compared to 18 per cent of boys), of which 93 per cent are economically inactive, possibly with family care responsibilities[5]. It is contended by Assaad and Levison that inadequate global labour market demand for young people invariably leads to young women being more likely to be found doing non-labour-force work and less likely to report themselves as actively seeking work. This results in many young women not being included in the unemployment rate, especially when the ‘seeking work’ criteria are applied[6].

While large groups of economically inactive females are a common feature among most NEET populations world-wide, there is a dearth of national and international evidence about effective interventions to reverse this trend, or, in fact, to accurately quantify or qualify their composition or existence. Some commentators highlight that the NEET economically inactive group is essentially an under-researched ‘black box’, which is categorised in terms of what young people are not doing, as opposed to understanding the likelihood of young people within the overall group or subgroups (re)engaging with education, employment or training (EET)[7]. The research by the YWT is exploring the reality of the lives of young women in the economically inactive group in England, including an analysis of their circumstances and aspirations. It is being carried out in a climate where impending welfare cuts are likely to remove even greater numbers of young people from independent welfare support, including housing benefit. However, early evidence suggests that the majority of economically inactive young women live with their families or relatives, with the impact of their ‘exclusion’ being borne by themselves and their household group.

With regard to future policymaking, the research into the economically inactive NEET group also calls into question the continued rationale for assigning both the young unemployed (i.e. those ‘actively seeking work’) and the economically inactive group within the umbrella term ‘NEET’. Is such an approach an equitable or acceptable way of ensuring that significant numbers of young women (and men) are not simply ‘written off’? Given that the epithet ‘NEET’ was coined originally in the UK to define 16- and 17-year olds who were outside the unemployment count, but is now commonly applied to those over 18 who are eligible to claim unemployed status, it may be both opportune and productive to question whether ‘NEET’, as currently defined and applied, is appropriate. Certainly, if it is applied too casually, it may mask rising and unacceptable levels of inactivity among young people. Another issue is whether an age range of 16-24 is too wide, as it encompasses significantly different ‘sections’ of the life course. Pronounced differences are apparent between the under-18s NEET group and the 18-24s NEET group in the UK. Here, the percentage of under-18s who are NEET is higher for males, whereas among the 18-24s, the percentage of females who are NEET is higher than that of males. Overall, there is an urgent need to reappraise how we define the NEET group, and, as a consequence, to re-think our policy responses to the issues confronting the various sub-groups within the NEET category.

At present, policy intervention is primarily targeted at young people who are ‘available for work’ (i.e. the unemployed group within the NEET population), as opposed to those who are defined as economically inactive. In order to formulate appropriate policy measures, we first of all need to identify and locate those who are presently ‘unknown’, ‘missing’ or ‘forgotten’, as far as the statistics are concerned. Along with this process, we need to generate substantive evidence – especially relating to the legion of young women who are affected – about what support, if any, they require. Crucially, this will include understanding what works best in assisting them to engage with support services and what additional support mechanisms may be required to attain an education, employment or training (EET) outcome. As far as current policy direction in the UK is concerned, there is a need to assess the potential impact of any national roll-out of Universal Credit on the future trajectories of the economically inactive NEET group.

[1] Office for National Statistics (ONS) (2016), Statistical Bulletin ‘Young People Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET), May 2016’, 26th May.
[2] Eurofound (2016) ‘Exploring the diversity of NEETs’, Publication Office of the European Union, Luxembourg.
[3] Britton J, Gregg P, MacMillan L, Mitchell S. (2011) The Early Bird... Preventing Young People from becoming a NEET statistic. Department of Economics and CMPO, University of Bristol.
[4] http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/09/halving-of-teenage-pregnancy-rate-hailed-as-extraordinary
[5] Bardak, U., Maseda, M. R. and Rosso, F. (2015) Young People Not in Employment Nor in Education or Training (NEET): An overview in ETF partner countries. Turin, European Training Foundation. July.
[6] Assaad, R. and Levison, D. (2013) Employment for Youth – A Growing Challenge for the Global Economy’. Background Research Paper. Submitted to the High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. University of Minnesota.
[7] Tamesberger, D. & Bacher, J. (2014) NEET youth in Austria: a typology including socio-demography, labour market behaviour and permanence. Journal of Youth Studies. 17:9, 1239-1259.