A presentation of the Youth 2011 report for Youth 4 Democracy by Piotr Arak.

1. Youth 2012
Piotr Arak, Adviser to the Minister of Administration
and Digital Engagement
Institute for Social Policy, University of Warsaw
Warsaw, 11 February 2012

2. You cannot talk about
young people without
talking about the
future, and you cannot
talk about the future
without talking about
young people

3. Why write a report on
youth?
• Poland and new challenges (historically unique moment)
• Young people as an important social asset and
opportunity for development
• Resources of the older generation are coming to an end
• Uniqueness of the young generation
• Psychological uniqueness of the young age
• Pressure of baby-boomers
• Perspective of baby-bust

4. What is so special about
the Polish youth?
• Exceptional circumstances in which they were growing up (the post-
transformation era)
• Opening to Western influences culturally and economically
• Post-modernity as the existing social order
• Consumerism and ideology of success as the main cultural offer
• IT revolution (freedom sphere)
• Enormous human capital development
• Prolonged youth and problems on the labour market
• Crisis elements:
• Complexities and tensions brought by the political transformation
• Shortages prevailing in a emerging economy
• Crisis of the global economy
• “Lost generation syndrome” - a rebellious potential

5. Share of young people
(aged 15-29) in the EU

6. Young people: a driver of
development, or a lost generation?
• The Arab Spring
• London riots
• „Occupy” movement
• The 1000 € generation
• 40% unemployment
• Anti-ACTA protests in
Poland

7. Young people in Arab
countries
Country Population share of Employment share GDP per capita in
under-30s of 15-24-year-olds (2008) purchasing power parity, $ thou., 2010
Algeria 56% 31% 7.1
Saudi Arabia 61% 25% 23.7
Bahrain 48% 30% 26.8
Egypt 61% 23% 6.4
Yemen 73% 22% 2.6
Jordan 65% 20% 5.7
Libya 61% 27% 14.9
Morocco 56% 35% 4.8
Oman 64% 29% 26.2
Syria 67% 32% 5.1
Tunisia 51% 22% 9.5

8. Parents - children /
social status
• Field A’: aspirations of young people are
very high, long education strategies,
parents support their children with capital
(better opportunities as compared to
peers and themselves);
• Field B’: aspirations are equally high or
slightly lower, assumed education
strategies are most often long but in fact
they prove shorter (or of lower quality),
parents instal ambitions into their children
- lack of capital for fulfillment of all the
objectives);
• Field C’: aspirations are significantly
lower, but not low (especially in reference
to consumption), lack of long education
strategies, parents pass on to their
children grievances and demanding
attitudes (lack of intellectual, material,
mental capital), taught pessimism and
passive attitude.

9. Self-descriptions
• The younger and
the older are
similarly
determined to
pursue their plans
for future.
• They differ in the
distribution of
"ascetic" versus
those more
"colourful",
"sentimental" and
"pragmatic" traits.

10. What was important in
life then and now?

11. Life orientantions of
young Poles
• Minimalists, who don't have high ambitions and are content with peaceful and
secure life, are on the margins (5% of young adults and 11.5% of younger youth).
• Dreamers - with high ambitions to achieve affluence, colorful and convenient
life, but with little basis for success - are 20% of young people.
• Those focused on bourgeois patterns and average status (conventionally
ambitious) are the mainstream of young people from the upper age brackets
(43.2%).
• Outstandingly ambitious: Young people who are more often attracted by
unconventional life patterns: colorful, eventful, with high priority attached to
outstanding careers and sophisticated consumption (30.4%).
• Uniquely ambitious - a combination of high consumption and status
ambitions and holding dear non-material values (8.3% of the youth and 12.5% of
young adults).

12. Why young people are
a driver of development
• Today, the young mind a sense of responsibility and self-
interest: they won’t begin to destroy the existing system.
• They are bred in consumerism.
• Their dream come true is not just a „house in the suburbs”
– they are becoming more postmaterialistic.
• They want to build happiness through stabilisation and the
opportunities to have a choice of style of life
• The 68’s revolution was possible thanks to a sense of crisis
and the contrulture, now youth culture is mainstream
• Know that Poland was through rougher times.

13. Internet
• 2.5 bln users globally.
• Young people are digital natives (mass-self-
communication as a fact).
• Young Poles are constantly on-line. They
spend 17 to 20 hours a week on-line. They
cannot do without the Internet and mobile
phone.

14. The Internet - viewed by the adults
with suspicion - plays important roles
in the lives of the youth:
• A new type of culture has developed - a culture of
participation
• Helps to pursue one's passions (which does not
have any institutional counterpart in real life)
• Meets important social needs - builds relationships
and a sense of belonging (which the real-life social
environment is unable to offer)
• A rendezvous place
• A marketplace and
• A political agora

15. Internet = freedom

16. Is the ACTA case a clash
of generations?
• “No to ACTA in No to ACTA in Poland
Poland” FB profile has Comment deleted by ACTA
220 thou. fans 50,00
• “Comment deleted by
37,50
ACTA” FB profile has
180 thou. fans
25,00
• Most of the protesters
are young people, 12,50
although the regulations
affect also life's of the 0
13-17 18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55+
“adult” generation
Source: http://blog.fanpagetrender.pl/?p=355

17. ACTA - a sickness in
progress
• No information
• No consultation
• Violating the one common virtue for every
young person “freedom”
• And freedom = internet
• You can can do whatever you like but you
can’t take my personal sphere of life from me

18. What did the government
(s) do wrong?
• After the 2011 “occupy” protests around the World,
went back to business as usual
• Only 1000 people in Warsaw protested in solidarity
with the 15 October movement
• 10 000 people walked in the Independence March
• With a potential of mistrust enough social energy
was established to “really do something”
• ACTA initiated a potential of revolt seen in many
other countries and young are consumers of culture

19. New "philosophy" of
consuming
• In the logic of consumerism, buying things or making certain use of them does not need to
be a sign of materialistic attitude, although it has very crucial positioning meaning (the "to
have" attitude tends to be displaced by the "to have in order to be" attitude). The
consumer society sees to it that these choices apply primarily to the way of life and are not
restricted to the appetite for having and using things.
• From the philosophy of a young consumer:
• What counts is not so much the drive to possess things as the philosophy of how to
use them, and the related expression, symbolism
• What matters is not how much and how you make for a living, but how much and how
you spend the money
• What is important is not how you work, but how you enjoy life and spend free time
• The most important thing is choice, which is a valuable in itself; the act of choosing is
even more important than what you've chosen
• The opportunity to choose one's Self and experimenting with the choice (in which many
things are important) are signs of freedom
• This philosophy contributes to defining many other life preferences, dilemmas and choices.

20. Intimacy and a new
sentimental order
• Romantic love and "two-pronged" relationships
• "Going out with somebody" and "picking up"
• Dreaming for an ideal partner and fearing a stable relationship
• Progressing moral permissiveness - discernible in the scope of
norms considered to be Catholic morals
• Expanding scope of erotic exploration
• At the same time, there is a growing trend towards radicalization
of traditional views
• Reducing the definition of family
• Increasing disapproval for couples living without marriage
• Decreasing approval for divorce
• Increasing support for laws prohibiting abortion

21. Young women are
different
• Better educated
• More determined to keep their position in the labour market
• Have many dilemmas
• Dilemma of maternity (children vs career)
• Economic dilemma (work vs home)
• Dilemma of personal fulfillment (time for her home vs time
for herself)
• Dilemma of freedom (marry or go on as a single person)
• Young males, social mentality and institutional solutions have
difficulties adapting to these circumstances

22. Education - differentiates but
also creates opportunities Share of people with
Educational ambitions of young people and the status of the family
higher education in the
population of 25-64
year-olds
30,00
22,50
15,00
7,50
0
1995 2009

23. Different work
attitudes
<D0E5<.0#9<2<1@#
*+"#
• Young people are less afraid of stress
2<3C#-A#.079>-7#<7D#9.1099#
$)"# and under-skilled or lower-status jobs
04:2-@407.#9.<?>2>.@#
$$"#
• What matters is appropriate income,
:019-7<2#D0=02-:407.#
$("# opportunities for personal
B-1C#3-4:2>78#B>./#9C>229#
'$"# development and quick promotion
3-7=>7>073#B-1C#/-519#
'!"#
• They are increasingly sending signals
/>8/#<5.-7-4@#
''"# that the time spent for work should
&&"#
not shatter the opportunities to
:-99>?>2>.@#-A#:1-4-6-7#
pursue one's interests, deprive of the
%"#
2-78#=<3<6-7# right to rest or spend time with
109:03;52#-335:<6-7#
$"# family
.0203-445678#
!"#
• What they cherish is flexible
-./01#
!"# organization of work. They are also
("# &("# '("# !("# $("# ,("# %("# *("# +("# )("#
increasingly raising the issue of job
<80D#&+F')## <22#<D52.9#
stability and security

24. Start in life - barriers
and risks
Social passivity of young people (NEET – not in employment, education or training, share in 15-24)
'&%
'"%
!&% !"#$%
!"%
&%
"% 8+ %
C6 7%
/0 -.,%
7 0%
%
>, %
;1 ,%
?- .8%
C6 ,-0%
*+. %
E- D%
3-@ .,%
-7 D%
@ %
@A I) 8%
1) %
K6 %
2%
34, %
<, %
F2 A@%
G) 80%
N@ 87 +%
@- =%
E.8 8D%
>) < %
B) @A@
.,
=.,
(@ +,*
;H 4-.,
5@ .,
7 .,
)2
;*6 9:
;*6 K*.A
8D
56 *
4I ,-
M@ ) -
.
8
?@ *,8
/J > . 4 D @
4<
,8
8
I% ,8
L@ @8
,
)
1-
,8
,
*,
+,
*,
4)
46
2
@
*,
*
()
“Nesting” rate of “basement dwellers” – Poland and EU27 in age group 18-34 (%)
Poland EU-27 EU-27 Poland
60,00 60,00
Temporary
Total
45,00 contract 45,00
30,00 30,00
15,00 15,00
0 0
2007 2009 2007 2008 2009 2010

25. The bad news
• In 2011, 74.8 million youth aged 15–24 were unemployed, an increase of
more than 4 million since 2007.
• The global youth unemployment rate, at 12.7 per cent, remains a full
percentage point higher than the pre-crisis level. Globally, young people are
nearly three times as likely as adults to be unemployed.
• In addition, an estimated 6.4 million young people have given up hope of
finding a job and have dropped out of the labour market altogether.
• Even those young people who are employed are increasingly likely to find
themselves in part-time employment and often on temporary contracts. In
developing countries, youth are disproportionately among the working
poor.
• As the number and share of unemployed youth is projected to remain
essentially unchanged in 2012, and as the share of young people
withdrawing from the labour market altogether continues to rise, on the
present course there is little hope for a substantial improvement in near-
term employment prospects for young people.

26. 0
12,50
25,00
37,50
50,00
22
EU-27
20
Belgium
28
Bulgaria
19
Czech Republic
14
Denmark
7
Germany
22
Estonia
28
Ireland 45
Greece
47
Spain
25
France
33
Italy 24
Cyprus
28
Latvia
31
Lithuania
16
Luxembourg
26
Hungary
13
Malta
7
barriers
Netherlands
8
Austria
27
Poland
31
Portugal
24
Romania
16
Slovenia
36
Slovakia
Professional start -
17
Finland
20
Sweden
22
United Kingdom
Unemployment rate - young people under 25 in EU27 countries and USA - December 2011
15
United States

27. Professional and private life
ambitions - the importance of family:
how to balance?
• The inactivity rate of women is too high
(about 40% and 5% higher that EU average).
• The difference between employment of
men and women is -13%.
• Uncertainty in family life decisions is almost
the highest in all Europe.

28. The power of women
Female PhD students in example
• Better and better
fields (as a % of all students)
educated
• Not only in humanities 70,00
but also in technical fields 64 66
52,50
• The pay-gap (13%) 53 51 50
between men and women 35,00
is not as high as in other 33
EU countries 17,50
• Our law is almost ideal 0
but the practice is not PhD total
humanities
economics
technical
medicine
law

29. Social cohesion
• “Elevator effect” – a distinctive feature of dynamic changes. This means that as
a society we have taken the elevator to one or two floors higher – despite all
previous and new differences we have more and our situation is better as far as
our earnings, education, mobility, law, schooling, mass consumption are
considered, but social inequalities have not disappeared – they have emerged at
another level.
• The differences related to lifestyle, tastes and culture, which will become the
essential determinants of social status, cannot be eliminated as a result of
generally higher standard of living and consumerism.
• In the future people with good and poor education will undoubtedly be set
even further apart.
• Differences between rural and metro areas.
• The disabled.
• Language - a way to distinct from the adults.

30. Changes in the disposable income
(PLN) of young households by the size
of localities

31. Deprivation index in selected
age groups – EU-27 in 2009
Severe material deprivation rate – defined as the enforced inability to pay unexpected expenses (equal to a monthly amount
recognized in a given country as the relative poverty line in the year preceding the survey), afford a one-week annual holiday away
from home, a meal involving meat or fish (or their vegetarian equivalent) every second day, the adequate heating of a dwelling,
durable goods like a washing machine, color television, telephone (desktop or mobile) or car, being confronted with payment arrears
(mortgage or rent, utility bills, hire purchase installments or other loan payments).

32. Risk behaviors
Percentage of young suspects in acts of violence and aggression versus all suspects in this category
Percentage of young suspects in thefts, robberies and criminal frauds versus all suspects in this category

33. Skills that will remain in
demand
• Computers are getting much better at pattern recognition, complex
communication and many other skills.That may be good for
businesses - but it's not always good for individual employees, who
may not be able to adapt as quickly as technology is advancing.
• How can you prepare yourself for careers in a fast-changing economy
filled with ever-faster, ever-smarter computers?
• One key is realizing that there are still many things computers are no
good at.
• They're not creative, and they can't think "outside the box"
• And they're not very empathic.
• These limitations point to some skills that people should acquire if
they want to be successful using machines in the future, instead of
competing against computers.
Source: Erik Brynjolfsson (2012), Andrew McAfee, Winning the Race With Ever-
Smarter Machines. In: MITSloan Management Review, Winter 2012 Vol. 53 No. 2.

34. Skills that will remain in
demand
• Applied math and statistics. Some think that the era of “big data” and powerful software means
that fewer people have to master the gritty details of statistical analysis. This is deepły misguided.
Knowing which analyses to conduct and how to interpret their results is more valuable than ever. We
think Google chief economist Hal Varian was on to something when he said that "the sexy job in the
next 10 years will be statisticians”.
• Negotiation and group dynamics. Management is one of the most durable professions, even as
computers advance. It turns out that organizations need dedicated managers working with teams,
advancing their agendas and working with their members.
• Good writing. Computers can only generate the simplest most formulaic prose. While few people
write for a living, lots of us do at least some writing. Getting good at it is a way to stand out from the
crowd - and from the machines,
• Framing problems and solving open-ended problems. Computers don't know what's
wrong or where the next opportunities are. Solving open-ended problems entails both perceiving the
challenge and addressing it. It's a major feature of primary and secondary educational systems like
Montessori, which might explain why Montessori graduates are so common among the elite of the tech
industry — the masters of racing with machines.
• Persuasion. Does anyone seriously think that a great salesperson will be unable to find work, even in
a highly digitized economy?
• Human interaction and nurturing. We are biologically wired to react to human attention and
the human touch in a way that no machine can replicate. That means that jobs that involve human
nurturing and, such interaction, such as child care and nursing, will continue to defy automation.
Source: Erik Brynjolfsson (2012), Andrew McAfee, Winning the Race With Ever-
Smarter Machines. In: MITSloan Management Review, Winter 2012 Vol. 53 No. 2.

35. Policy recommendations - women
(the most important part)
• An improvement to the conditions for developing the standing
of women and the use of their potential multiplies the strength
of developmental factors.
• Promote equal treatment of women and men, which means
persistent practical fulfillment of the existing legislation,
including provisions on quota share of women in various
representative bodies.
• Disseminate new patterns of employment and development of
working women, better adapted to different types of education
an professional opportunities of women (including to support
new skills of women who decide to return - after a break - to
the labour market or without the experience of professional
start, through special activation programs from the Labour
Fund).

36. Policy recommendations
- education
• It is crucial to create conditions for any young person to have access to the educational path
of their choice. This requires a policy of equal opportunities to enable any child three or
more years old to participate in universal education and personalization of education
processes in order to stimulate individual development of people who want to close their
educational gaps or are highly talented.
• What is necessary is to enable the acquisition of digital competences in schools (a digital
educational revolution, which needs appropriate preparation of teachers and equipment, as
well as school access to high-speed, broad-band Internet).
• A good career counseling should be developed in middle schools, and vocational education
should be dramatically improved and modernized to fit well our economy, which would
increase its quality and attractiveness for young people.
• What is important is to improve the efficiency and quality of tertiary education, develop
bursaries in a simple formula (loan for a student's record book), scholarships for highly gifted
students (so as to enable the best to study at foreign universities), for post-graduate students
(to allow them pay their bills) and post-doctoral students. What is needed is also greater
support for placements abroad and presence of foreign students in Poland.
• The essence of continuing educational reforms is to diminish territorial differences, and thus
inconsistencies in the access to quality education, and to reduce the role of burdens resulting
from weak stimulation exerted by family environment. Polish schools should demonstrate a
much greater ability to develop educational value added.

37. Policy recommendations
- labour market
• The Active Labour Market Policy programmes, which are financed from the
Labour Fund, should not be restricted, and should be made more flexible so
that to allow for employment of graduates in local government to carry out
targeted projects, or university or school students in periods of specialist
professional traineeships. At the same time, a duty should be introduced to
employ trainees for a more stable period following the traineeship at the
employer's establishment.
• Creating a single contract for all workers, with privileges increasing in
separate stages (T. Boeri, P. Garibaldi)
• A system of promotion of innovative entrepreneurship should be
established, by increasing incentives for innovative "start-ups" and assigning
appropriate grants for this purpose, thanks to which young micro-businesses
would be able to contract research projects and implement innovations.
• Conditions should be established to ensure adequate social insurance to
people employed in untypical forms of employment, while not increasing
excessively the cost of work. (social security and pension system)

38. Policy recommendations
- family life
• Promote and disseminate new solutions to support flexible balance between
different types of jobs and caring functions (which should involve both
amendments to the Labour Code and new attitudes of employers who by this
invest in job/life balance of workers).
• Introduce to the education system solutions to universalize pre-school
education to encompass at least 90% of children in each age from 3 to 5 year-
olds, which will contribute to the equalization of educational opportunities for
children and reduce alternative costs paid by the parents.
• Develop a new model of support to healthcare for children in schools by
availability of nursing care and better disease prevention (regular dental
checkups, examination of the musculoskeletal system, and prevention of obesity
in children, which requires organized and strong promotion of healthy
nutrition).
• Introduce changes to the system of family welfare benefits to increase their
availability in a real risk of being affected by poverty, but combined with support
for recovering from poverty (to avoid durable trap of being dependent on
welfare benefits) and with targeting main measures on families with many
children.

39. Policy recommendations
- family life
• Analyze the opportunities to channel more support for the increase of fertility
rate by greater tax cuts for children - up from the third child in a family.
• Promote cultural and mental change in order to increase the acceptance for
solutions to support children and unions of people upbringing children,
regardless of the formal side of the relations between the partners.
• Make dramatic changes in caring for disabled children to strengthen their
development potential by adequate education system (from nursery school to
university) to allow in the future independence in life by taking up employment.
• To improve housing conditions for the young generation, develop a new
program to provide a better choice of housing for rent, organize flexible forms
of getting temporary housing from the social housing pool for a start in life at
low income. One of the goals and objectives of the program will be also to
make available long-term loans with greater confidence for the
creditworthiness of young customers and with potential guarantees from the
State, or developing conditions for the availability of debt instruments to
support mortgage loans and its granting.

40. Open government - preconditions
for a civilizational leap forward
• Create conditions, mainly regulatory ones and those related to
the availability of services and content on the Internet (e-
Government, open government) and to full openness of public
resources in order to tap all the potential offered by digitization
factors as carriers of innovation for young-generation innovators
and for the general society.
• Prepare for implementation programs to increase the accessibility
of culture (books, development of the library network, digitization
of cultural resources - the national and international canon) and
adequately introducing cultural education to schools so as to
increase the creativity potential of the society.
• Create legal and material conditions for the implementation of a
modern public mission in the media, which should be conducive to
increased participation in culture, understanding of the world and
participation in open public debates.

41. Open government - preconditions
for a civilizational leap forward
• Provide mechanisms for the participation and consultation in developing
public decisions compatible with participatory democracy (in the small
local scale - develop initiatives related to participatory budgets) with the
use of modern communication technologies (networks), by building a
model of open Government - and thus conditions for the young
generation to shift from being a bystander to become an actor.
• Provide new conditions for uninhibited activity of civil society and its
institutions (including NGOs in their different forms), strengthening it
through a long-term project to build a multi-annual program of financial
support to essential capital of these organizations (a new Civil Initiative
Fund with budget grants on a scale matching the funding by citizens who
deduct 1% from their taxes for the activity of social initiatives).
• Develop a new way for the functioning of real youth participatory
organizations in different levels and in different areas, assigning them real
tasks to accomplish, thus supporting the government coordination of
activities for the young generation.

42. Intergenerational
solidarity
• Openness
• Dialog
• Appreciating the historic differences (the
Solidarity movement and the time of
transformation)
• Being aware of the “technological gap”
• CRUCIAL: enabling an effective start to adult
life by adequate policy

43. Thank you for your
attention!
Report “Youth 2011” available here:
http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/71414556?
access_key=key-217a64r33shrsa8iv420
You can contact me here: piotr.arak@mac.gov.pl
or piotr.arak@gmail.com