Understanding NEET status in Cameroon and Chad: determinants and gender disparities

Purpose - This study aims to examine the association between Not in Employment, Education, or Training (NEET) status and a set of individual and household socioeconomic factors, including potential gender-based variations, for young people aged 15–34 years in Cameroon and Chad. Design/methodology/approach - Using data from the 2021 Survey on Youths’ Transition to the Labour Market in Francophone Africa, logistic regressions were conducted to identify the determinants of NEET status, and the multivariate decomposition for nonlinear response models was employed to examine gender disparities in the likelihood of being NEET. Findings - In Cameroon, the likelihood of being NEET is linked to factors such as age, being female, being in a couple, having dependent children, financial difficulties and urban residency. In Chad, NEET status is associated with higher education, age, being female, being in a couple and having dependent children, but decreases with secondary education, technical education and balancing work and study. Gender disparities in NEET status are largely explained by individual characteristics, accounting for 56.16% of the disparity in Cameroon and 73.72% in Chad. The main contributors in Cameroon are higher education, marital status and having children, while in Chad they are secondary and technical education, studying STEM, age, marital status and having children. Originality/value - This paper makes two key contributions: first, it is the pioneering study on the determinants of entering the NEET category in sub-Saharan Africa, focusing on individual characteristics; second, it offers the first comprehensive decomposition of factors driving gender disparities in the likelihood of being NEET.