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YOUTH, PROSPERITY, AND SECURITY INITIATIVE: GLOBAL YOUTH WELLBEING INDEX SUMMARY

Core Content

The Youth, Prosperity, and Security Initiative (YPSI), a collaboration between the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the International Youth Foundation (IYF), aims to address the opportunities and challenges faced by young people globally. A key project of this initiative is the Global Youth Wellbeing Index, designed to measure the wellbeing of youth across various domains and provide a comprehensive framework for understanding their role in national and global development, economic growth, and security.

Main Viewpoints

• Youth as a Critical Demographic: Half the world's population is under 25, and in some countries, youth make up nearly 40% of the population. This underscores the importance of addressing youth needs for national and global progress.
• Need for a Youth-Focused Index: While existing socioeconomic assessments provide valuable insights, they do not specifically focus on young people. The Global Youth Wellbeing Index fills this gap by offering a holistic, multi-dimensional measure of youth wellbeing.
• Positive Youth Development (PYD): PYD is a central concept in the Index, emphasizing the importance of fostering youth strengths and opportunities rather than focusing solely on risk factors. It highlights the need for youth participation, positive indicators, and subjective measures of outlook.
• Youth Wellbeing as Multidimensional: Youth wellbeing is not just about economic status but also includes health, education, safety, citizenship, and access to information and communications technology (ICT).
• Data Gaps and Challenges: There are significant limitations in age-disaggregated data, especially for subjective indicators and youth-specific metrics. These gaps hinder comprehensive assessments and highlight the Index's role in advocating for better data collection.

Key Information

Domains of the Index

The Index includes six key domains:

• Citizenship
• Education
• Economic Opportunity
• Health
• Safety and Security
• Information and Communications Technology (ICT)

Each domain is assessed using three types of indicators:

1. National Environment: Factors affecting the overall quality of life, such as infrastructure and levels of conflict.
2. Youth Status: Direct measures of youth conditions in specific areas, such as literacy rates.
3. Youth Perceptions: Subjective indicators reflecting how youth view their opportunities and environment, such as satisfaction with government.

Data Sources and Partners

The Index utilizes data from:

• World Bank
• World Health Organization (WHO)
• UNESCO
• Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation
• IYF, Hilton Worldwide, The Futures Company, YouthPolicy.org, and Youth Business International/Global Entrepreneurship Monitor

These partners contribute both publicly available and proprietary data to ensure a robust and diverse assessment.

Limitations

• Limited Age-Disaggregated Data: There is a lack of comprehensive data that specifically measures the wellbeing of youth, especially in subjective areas.
• Global Data Coverage Gaps: Data on youth is often collected by different institutions, at different times, and in varying geographical contexts, making comparisons difficult.
• Inequity in Youth Wellbeing: Youth wellbeing varies significantly based on factors like gender, socioeconomic status, and geographic location. The Index seeks to address these disparities, though current data does not fully support this.

Future Steps

• Release of the Beta Index: The Index will be launched for 30 countries, representing 70% of the world's youth population.
• Expanding Data Collection: The initiative plans to conduct new surveys and collect more data to enhance the Index's coverage and depth, particularly for specific youth groups like young women and urban youth.
• Policy Influence and Investment: The Index aims to inspire policy dialogue, influence reform, and encourage strategic investments in youth wellbeing.

Conclusion

The Global Youth Wellbeing Index is a pioneering effort to holistically measure and address the wellbeing of young people. By integrating PYD, considering youth perceptions, and addressing data gaps, the Index provides a valuable tool for policymakers and stakeholders to understand and support youth in a more nuanced and effective manner.