Consequences, risk factors, and geography of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET)

Chapter 1 Introduction

This report investigates the consequences, risk factors and geographies of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) over the past two decades. The research used the Scottish Longitudinal Study (SLS) which links a sample of individual records from the 1991, 2001 and 2011 censuses and a wide range of data from different sources to allow an effective assessment of risk factors and outcomes. Scotland's censuses were also used to examine the geographies of NEETs.

Policy background

This research will be used to inform policies aimed at assisting the Scottish Government achieve its objectives around supporting young people into post-16 education, training and employment. The research provides a longitudinal evidence base which will help policy makers understand past and current policy impacts (such as 'More Choices, More Chances' and 'Opportunities for All') as well as informing future policy development.

The proportion of 16-19 year olds who are NEET is a key measure which feeds into the Scottish Government's 'Opportunities for All' policy, which is the Scottish Government's commitment to an offer of a place in learning or training for every 16-19 year old (up to their 20th birthday), with a specific focus on young people not in education, employment or training. It brings together a range of existing national and local policies and strategies, including More Choices More Chances and 16+ Learning Choices, as a single focus to improve young people's participation in post-16 learning or training.

What we know about the NEET group?

The size of NEETs in Scotland

The emergence of the NEET group as a focus of social concern can be traced to the publication of the Social Exclusion Unit's (SEU) report "Bridging the Gap" (SEU, 1999).

In Scotland, as in the rest of the UK, the Annual Population Survey (APS, formerly the Labour Force Survey) has been used to monitor the size of the NEET group at the national level. Based on the APS, the size of NEETs was consistently around 30,000 in Scotland between 1996 and 2013, accounting for 11%-15% of young people aged 16-19 (Scottish Executive 2006; Scottish Government 2015). The latest statistics, however, show that the number of NEETs in 2014 has dropped to around 21,000 young people, accounting for only 8% of young people (Scottish Government, 2015). A proportion of the NEET group choose to be NEET such as those on a gap year, and this subgroup is less likely to experience negative outcomes. The size of this group is difficult to estimate due to the fact that this group is usually NEET only in the short-term, varies with age and gender, some young people may not actually return to education and there may be other reasons why they are NEET.

Factors associated with NEET status

To prevent individuals becoming, or remaining, part of the NEET group, it is essential to understand why young people become NEET. Low educational attainment at age 16 is the most powerful predictor of being NEET (Payne, 1998; Croxford and Raffe, 2003). Disaffection with school is also an important predictor. Studies using the Scottish School Leavers Survey (SSLS) and Youth Cohort Study (YCS) reported that those who have been regular truants or expelled by school were more likely to be NEET (Furlong, 2006; Croxford and Raffe, 2003; Coles et al, 2002).

Additionally, low socioeconomic status of parents (Bynner and Parsons, 2002), living in a household where neither parents worked full-time (Robson, 2008), teenage pregnancy (Yates et al, 2010), having a health problem or disability (Robson, 2008), being a carer (Scottish Government, 2006; Audit Commission, 2010), having a record of substance abuse (Audit Commission, 2010), being an offender (Audit Commission, 2010) have all been mentioned as factors leading to NEET status. Bynner and Parsons (2002) also found that low birth weight is a significant predictor of NEET status at age 16-18.

Young people from Caribbean, Pakistani and Bangladeshi minority ethnic groups were found to be over-represented in the NEET group in England (Coles et al 2010). Not all ethnic minorities show a higher risk of becoming NEET. 'Other Asian' and Indian are two ethnic groups who outperform other ethnic groups in terms of engagement with education or employment (DfE, 2011).

However there is not a consensus, in the literature, on what factors may increase a younger person's risk of becoming NEET. For example, some studies have found no relationship between family disadvantage and poverty and the risk of being a NEET (Croxford and Raffe, 2003).

The proportion of young people who are NEET differs from one region of the country to another and the composition of the NEET group also varies between localities (Sachdev et al., 2006). In Scotland, the government has identified local authority NEET 'hotspots' that were defined as such because they have a high NEET rate and scored highly on geographical measures which are known to relate to a high NEET rate (Scottish Executive 2006).

Area deprivation is identified as a potential risk factor in Bynner and Parsons (2002) where they found that the young who lived in inner cities were at high risk of being NEET. In contrast, Croxford and Raffe (2000) did not find that living in a deprived area or in an area of high unemployment is related to higher risks of becoming NEET.

Census data have also been used in identifying the scale, social and geographical patterns of NEETs (Scottish Executive 2004). The analysis of 2001 census data showed that the rate of NEETs was higher for males and increased with age. The NEET group was described by gender, age, economic status, long-term illness, and distribution among local authorities.

The effects of being NEET

So far most research cited has examined the effects of youth unemployment while a small number of works have looked at the effects of being NEET. The majority of studies focus on labour market prospects while a small number look at the effects on health and well-being, social life, and the public spending.

Some research on the effects of being NEET or unemployed has demonstrated that there is a scarring effect on labour market prospects. Bynner and Parson (2002) found that NEET experiences between ages 16 and 18 were associated with disengagement from employment and education at age 21, the most consistent and significant finding from their research using the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS). The impact of NEET experiences however varied with gender. Those that had been NEET for a spell of six months between ages 16 and 18 were over four and seven times as likely to become NEET at age 21 for men and women respectively (Bynner and Parson, 2002). Youth unemployment is found to be associated with between a 8% and 15% lower income in mid-career for previously NEET individuals (Gregg and Tominey, 2005).

Furlong et al (2003) used the West of Scotland Twenty-07 study to investigate transitions from school to work for the young. The sample of 15 year olds in 1987 in the Glasgow area was followed-up at ages 16, 18, 21, and 23. Non-linear transitions were defined as sequences that did not involve straightforward routes through education or training to employment. They showed that, for young people, non-linear transitions were associated with a significant reduction in the chances of stable employment by age 23.

Although many studies support the negative impact of NEET on employment prospects at a later stage, not all research supports this conclusion. Gardecki and Neumark (1997) used the Longitudinal Survey of Youth in the US examining the consequences of 'churning' or 'floundering about' in the labour market for the young age group to assess whether faster transitions to stable labour market relationships would lead to improved adult labour market outcomes. They concluded that outcomes at the ages of late twenties and early thirties were largely unrelated to early labour market experiences for both males and females.

A few studies have examined the impact of being NEET on health. Bynner and Parson (2002) investigated the impact of NEET status on general health and psychological well-being. They found that women who were NEET were more likely to report lack of control over life and dissatisfaction with life at age 21 while the effect on men disappeared when early experience factors were included. Their study did not find a negative effect of NEET status on self-reported general health for men or women.

Research by the Prince's Trust (2012) found that the emotional health of young people can suffer if they are unemployed, compared to those who are in work or education. For example, their survey results revealed that individuals who are NEET are more likely to report feeling "always" or "often" stressed, down and depressed and less likely to "always" or "often" feel loved and hopeful. In addition, they are less happy with all areas of their lives and less confident about their future.

Bell and Blanchflower (2010) examined four well-being outcomes: life satisfaction, health status, depression and job satisfaction using the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS). They found that spells of unemployment while young were strong predictors of lower happiness, poorer self-reported general health, higher level of depression, and a lower level of job satisfaction, more than two decades later.

Being outside education, employment or training is also associated with early motherhood for women. It has been shown that the group of women who were mothers in their teens were over-represented among the NEET population at age 16-19. At age 21 nearly 40 per cent of women who had been NEET at age 16-18 had two or more children compared with less than five per cent of those in education, employment or training at that age (Coles et al 2002).

Being NEET may have impacts on the next generation. Educational qualifications, social status or earnings of a generation have long lasting influences on the next generation. Analysis of the NCDS showed that during the 1980s, young men (aged between 23 and 33) were twice as likely to be unemployed for at least one year if their father had been unemployed at age 16 (SEU, 1999).

NEET experiences may be costly for NEET individuals because of their exclusion from employment, low earnings and poor health in later life. Furthermore, it is also costly for the whole society. Research undertaken by York University (Coles et al, 2010) found that a young person who was NEET in 2008 would incur an average of £56,000 in public finance costs before retirement age. This reflects the public finance costs of welfare payments, health and justice-related costs and lower tax and national insurance revenue. On the basis of this estimate, the Scottish Government (2012) estimated the lifetime cost of a single cohort of young people failing to make the transition into regular employment to be in the region of £2 billion.

Although there have been studies on the NEET group, few studies so far have incorporated individual, family and geographical factors in a single analytical framework. Indeed, the majority of studies are descriptive and qualitative.

From the life course perspective, disaffection with education and employment can result from early childhood experiences, and the shadow of NEET status may be cast over a long period after youth. Longitudinal data analysis is thus required to explore the NEET phenomenon, to provide evidence for policy making and also to evaluate the effectiveness of policy interventions.

Relatively little research has taken the quantitative route and used longitudinal data. Studies using the 1958 NCDS and the 1970 BCS were prominent in examining life course factors and the subsequent impact of NEET experiences. However, the experience of young people in the past decade is likely to be significantly different from that of the 1958 and 1970 birth cohorts because economic, social and policy circumstances have changed considerably. Studies using BCS 70 and SSLS only follow young people up to their early 20s and thus are only able to demonstrate the effect of NEET status in the short term rather than the longer term. In previous studies on the health effects of NEET experiences, self-reported indicators were often used instead of objective measures.

Study aims and objectives

This study aims to comprehensively examine the consequences, risk factors and geographies of being NEET for the young generation in the past two decades in Scotland. Our objectives are to address three key questions:

1. To what extent does NEET status affect outcomes in later life?
2. What individual, family, educational and geographical factors are related to risks of becoming NEET?
3. Are there geographic patterns of NEETs? And, have these patterns changed over time?

The remainder of this report is structured as follows. Chapter 2 introduces the data, the definition of NEET, the samples and analytical methods used in the study. Chapter 3 presents analytical results separately for the three research questions. The final chapter summarises research findings and their implications and suggests future research.