Is It Possible to Tackle Youth Needs with Agricultural and Rural Development Policies?

Abstract

Rural youth are influenced by a wide range of uncertainties regarding their personal and professional development. Rural youth and in particular rural NEETs (Not in Employment, Education or Training) are especially vulnerable and face higher risks of labour market, social and economic exclusion. This paper aims to analyse the determinants of the dynamics of rural NEETs in three post-transitional countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Serbia) compared to the EU-28 average and to Ireland as an example of an established EU member state with over 50% of its population living in rural areas that can act as a benchmark for effective policy implementation to address challenges of marginalized youth, during the 2009–2019 period. The dynamics of rural NEET status and the efficiency/adaptability of regional development policies are revealed through analysis of macro and socioeconomic factors as well as specific employment-related indicators disaggregated by gender and degree of urbanisation. The comparative analysis indicates deficiencies in regional development policies among post-transitional countries and the potential to adapt modern European practices and policies for improving the rural NEETs’ position.

Youth's (Un)willingness to work in agriculture sector

“…The present study showed the need to attract young people to work in agriculture and the need for policy instruments. This finding supports the results of Mujčinović et al ( 49 ) who analyzed the possibility to tackle the need for the youth by the means of agricultural and rural development policy in 28 EU countries and Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia and Serbia. Their comparative analysis indicated the need for the policy aimed at attracting young people to work in agriculture.…”

Modelling the Common Agricultural Policy Impact over the EU Agricultural and Rural Environment through a Machine Learning Predictive Framework

“…Thus, since the present study targets to assess and, furthermore, improve the impact of CAP on the EU agriculture and rural environment, the main indicators, related to agriculture's technical performance and productivity, as well as the environmental, economic, and social sustainability of the rural communities, were considered. By analysing the scientific literature, different studies applied various data set structure for determining various aspects of social, environmental, and economic dimensions, in relation to the agriculture sector [31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41].…”

“…Agriculture is also involved in the rural youth (not in employment, education, or training-NEETs) dimension, and several authors [40] developed frameworks involving variables, such as youth population (aged [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24], as well as the share of the total population, labor productivity, GVA, number of employed people, or risk of poverty rate, in order to control the social impact of agriculture sector on rural areas. Additionally, other authors [41] used linear regression models to determine whether the rural NEET indicator depends on other factors such as rural unemployment, rural employment, GDP, or rural demography.…”

Rapid Evidence Assessment Protocol for the Meta-Analysis of Initiatives, Interventions and Programmes That Target Rural NEETs

“…However, in practical terms, policy packages continue to fail to match the agriculture sector's needs for human capital with the employment needs of rural NEETs. This mismatch can be ascribed to a series of interrelated factors, with most of them remaining unaddressed by decisionmaking (Simões 2018;Simões and do Rio 2020;Mujčinović et al 2021). One of them is the excessive protectionism of the sector that prevents newcomers with limited background knowledge of the sector such as NEETs from finding a job in the sector (Greer 2017).…”