The Pathways That Lead Youth in NEET: The Case of Russia

Causes and consequences of the so-called NEET status (Not in Employment, Educationor Training) are one of the popular foreign areas of youth labour markets research. NEET youth are one of the most vulnerable categories of the non-employed. Representatives of this group are common recipients of social benefits from the state and depend on the money transfers from relatives. The probability of finding a permanent job for young people who previously were in the NEET status is reduced. They have higher risks of informal employment, problems with physical and mental health, propensity to criminal activities and substance abuse, low level of trust in social institutions. Despite the relevance of the study, youth transitions between school, employment and different types of NEET status (so-called NEET-unemployment and NEET-inactivity) are relatively rare analyzed on panel data. Present study introduces the flows of young people entering and leaving the NEET group in the Russian labour market as the focus of the research for the first time. This topic is particularly relevant for Russia since, according to Rosstat, the share of Russian NEET youth in 2010–2015 was 12–15% of all young people aged 15–24 years. The source of the data for the study is the Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey – Higher School of Economics (RLMS-HSE) for 2000–2016. The main findings of the study are based on the analysis of the transition matrices and the results of the estimations of dynamic multinomial logit regression models on the subsamples of men and women aged 15–24 years. According to the results received the share of NEET youth in Russia by 2016 was about 15% of all young people aged 15–24 years. At the same time, during the economic crisis, the growth in the share of NEET youth was mainly due to the increase of NEET-unemployment. The share of the latter in 2015–2016 reached the maximum values for the entire period analyzed (9–10% of all young people aged 15–24 years). Despite the heterogeneous nature of the Russian NEET, the risks of falling into this state are mainly associated with education – either with its insufficient level (in the case of inactive NEETs) or with its low quality (in the case of unemployed NEETs). Thus, higher education in Russia is associated with the greatest risks of NEET unemployment, while the risks of transition to the state of NEET-inactivity are concentrated among those who received vocational education after incomplete secondary school or after graduating from high school. Changes in the marital status are also among important factors of NEET state. However the probability of finding a job next year reaches 50% for unemployed NEETs, and about 30–40% for inactive NEETs. Thus, NEET status at the moment does not seem to be unequivocal hopeless «trap» for Russian youth.