Browsing by Subject "equality of opportunity"

In Finland during the 2010’s, continuous political concerns have been expressed for the youth not in education, employment or training. These youth, often referred by acronym NEET or as socially excluded, have been repeatedly shown to be in a vulnerable position in terms of current well-being and future outcomes in various life domains. In this study, the interest lies in the youth transitions to education and employment, conditioned by family background and childhood experiences. Being NEET is regarded as a non-normative transition, embedded in the social and historical context of life course. Family backgrounds are important determinants of various outcomes in subsequent individual life trajectories. The intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic status (SES) has been verified by vast amount of research on social mobility and it is well-known that childhood adversities are associated with a wide range of deficiencies in later well-being. However, less is known on the association between family background and NEET. Previous literature implies that socioeconomic disadvantage during childhood is related to NEET but the evidence on childhood adversities and NEET and the concurrent contributions of SES and adversities remains scarce. In this study, Finnish register data on a 20 % random sample of households with 0–14-year-old child in 2000 is used to probe the associations between childhood socioeconomic factors, adversities and NEET at the age of 18. For an analytical sample of cohorts born between 1986–1993 (N=99,137) a broad range of childhood indicators are used to predict NEET. The childhood measures include family SES, parental substance abuse and psychiatric disorders, death of a parent, living with a single parent and being placed outside home. The study aims to find answers to three empirical questions on whether there is an association between socioeconomic family background and NEET, is there an association between childhood adversities and NEET and are the associations of SES and adversities independent. Logistic regression is used as the statistical method. The results from the statistical analyses show that childhood SES is strongly and inversely related to the risk of NEET. Low parental education, low levels of household income and recurrent parental long-term unemployment had independent association with NEET when assessed concurrently, with low parental education tripling the odds of NEET. Adverse experiences in childhood had also crude associations with NEET: exposure to parental psychiatric and substance abuse disorders increased the odds of NEET around 20–100 %. Placement out of home increased the odds of NEET 2.5–3.5 times and living with single parent doubled the odds. However, when socioeconomic background was controlled for, the associations between parental health and NEET disappeared and in the case of the other adversities, the associations were significantly attenuated. Implications for gender modifying the association between parental education and NEET were found, suggesting that parental education has stronger association with NEET among boys. Other childhood variables did not have statistically significant interaction with gender. According to the results derived in this study, the life-course transitions to education and employment are conditioned by family background and thus the opportunities for transitions among Finnish youth can be considered unequal. In NEET-context, the socioeconomic family background is especially important childhood factor for subsequent life course. The results are in line with previous literature on the association between parental SES and NEET. The weaker associations between childhood adversities and NEET might be explained by NEET being more of a socioeconomic indicator during the transition to adulthood and to some extent by measurement of adversities. Regardless of the mechanisms of intergenerational socioeconomic transmission, supportive social political measures for socioeconomically disadvantaged families are in order, especially for those families facing cumulative socioeconomic risks. Further research assessing the total contribution of family background concurrently with individual attributes of NEET-youth would be valuable.