Publication: The Challenge of Youth Employment in
Sri Lanka
Loading...
Published
2010
ISSN
Date
2012-03-19
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
Sri Lanka has been regarded as a model of a country with successful social policies, yet for decades it has faced major challenges in providing employment and satisfying other aspirations of youth. Although the labor force has become more educated, and this trend is particularly marked for youth, the main source of employment for both youth and adults remains the informal sector. Moreover, the importance of the informal sector as a source of employment has increased since the mid-1990s. On the positive side, unemployment declined in last decades, particularly for youth. The Sri Lankan government has continually acted on various fronts to address the youth unemployment problem. It has tried to improve and modernize Sri Lanka's general education system, which has long been criticized as too academic, and to increase the accessibility of training so as to promote the employability youth leaving school. Other actions included strengthening entrepreneurship programs and introducing career guidance and counseling and improving labor market information to help young people in their job searches and to guide human resource planning. In 2007, the government developed the National Action Plan for youth employment, built, for the first time, on a coherent youth employment policy framework and deriving an encompassing and consistent set of policy recommendations. The plan was based on in-depth analysis of Sri Lanka's labor market, provided via a series of background papers undertaken under the auspices of the Youth Employment Network (YEN). To provide the richness and comprehensiveness of this analysis in its totality, these papers, updated and revised, are collected in the present book. This book offers a wealth of valuable advice to the government and other stakeholders to achieve this goal. By exploiting the full potential of the youth, not only will their talent, aspirations, and energy be harnessed to advance economic growth, but also the existing inequities will be reduced and, hopefully in the longer run, eliminated.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Gunatilaka, Ramani; Mayer, Markus; Vodopivec, Milan. 2010. The Challenge of Youth Employment in
Sri Lanka. Direction in Development ; human development. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/2451 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication Democratic Republic of Congo Urbanization Review(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2018)The Democratic Republic of Congo has the third largest urban population in sub-Saharan Africa (estimated at 43% in 2016) after South Africa and Nigeria. It is expected to grow at a rate of 4.1% per year, which corresponds to an additional 1 million residents moving to cities every year. If this trend continues, the urban population could double in just 15 years. Thus, with a population of 12 million and a growth rate of 5.1% per year, Kinshasa is poised to become the most populous city in Africa by 2030. Such strong urban growth comes with two main challenges – the need to make cities livable and inclusive by meeting the high demand for social services, infrastructure, education, health, and other basic services; and the need to make cities more productive by addressing the lack of concentrated economic activity. The Urbanization Review of the Democratic Republic of Congo argues that the country is urbanizing at different rates and identifies five regions (East, South, Central, West and Congo Basin) that present specific challenges and opportunities. The Urbanization Review proposes policy options based on three sets of instruments, known as the three 'I's – Institutions, Infrastructures and Interventions – to help each region respond to its specific needs while reaping the benefits of economic agglomeration The Democratic Republic of the Congo is at a crossroads. The recent decline in commodity prices could constitute an opportunity for the country to diversify its economy and invest in the manufacturing sector. Now is an opportune time for Congolese decision-makers to invest in cities that can lead the country's structural transformation and facilitate greater integration with African and global markets. Such action would position the country well on the path to emergence.Publication Strengthening Competitiveness In Bangladesh—Thematic Assessment(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2016-07-15)This is volume 2 of a three-volume publication on Bangladesh’s trade prospects. Bangladesh’s ambition is to build on its very solid growth and poverty reduction achievements, and accelerate growth to become a middle income country by 2021, and share prosperity more widely amongst its citizens. This includes one of its greatest development challenges: to provide gainful employment to the over 2 million people that will join the labor force each year over the next decade. Moreover, only 54.1 million of its 94 million working age people are employed. Bangladesh needs to use its labor endowment even more intensively to increase growth and, in turn, to absorb the incoming labor. The Diagnostic Trade Integration Study identifies the following actions centered around four pillars to sustain and accelerate export growth: (1) breaking into new markets through a) better trade logistics to reduce delivery lags ; as world markets become more competitive and newer products demand shorter lead times, to generate new sources of competitiveness and thereby enable market diversification; and b) better exploitation of regional trading opportunities in nearby growing and dynamic markets, especially East and South Asia; (2) breaking into new products through a) more neutral and rational trade policy and taxation and bonded warehouse schemes; b) concerted efforts to spur domestic investment and attract foreign direct investment, to contribute to export promotion and diversification, including by easing the energy and land constraints; and c) strategic development and promotion of services trade; (3) improving worker and consumer welfare by a) improving skills and literacy; b) implementing labor and work safety guidelines; and c) making safety nets more effective in dealing with trade shocks; and (4) building a supportive environment, including a) sustaining sound macroeconomic fundamentals; and b) strengthening the institutional capacity for strategic policy making aimed at the objective of international competitiveness to help bring focus and coherence to the government’s reform efforts. This second volume provides in-depth analysis across seven cross-cutting themes that underpin most of the findings of pillars 1 and 2 above.Publication An Investment Framework for Nutrition(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2017-04-12)The report estimates the costs, impacts and financing scenarios to achieve the World Health Assembly global nutrition targets for stunting, anemia in women, exclusive breastfeeding and the scaling up of the treatment of severe wasting among young children. To reach these four targets, the world needs $70 billion over 10 years to invest in high-impact nutrition-specific interventions. This investment would have enormous benefits: 65 million cases of stunting and 265 million cases of anemia in women would be prevented in 2025 as compared with the 2015 baseline. In addition, at least 91 million more children would be treated for severe wasting and 105 million additional babies would be exclusively breastfed during the first six months of life over 10 years. Altogether, achieving these targets would avert at least 3.7 million child deaths. Every dollar invested in this package of interventions would yield between $4 and $35 in economic returns, making investing in early nutrition one of the best value-for-money development actions. Although some of the targets—especially those for reducing stunting in children and anemia in women—are ambitious and will require concerted efforts in financing, scale-up, and sustained commitment, recent experience from several countries suggests that meeting these targets is feasible. These investments in the critical 1000 day window of early childhood are inalienable and portable and will pay lifelong dividends – not only for children directly affected but also for us all in the form of more robust societies – that will drive future economies.Publication At a Crossroads(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2017-05-02)Higher education (HE) has expanded dramatically in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) since 2000. While access became more equitable, quality concerns remain. This volume studies the expansion, as well as HE quality, variety and equity in LAC. It investigates the expansion’s demand and supply drivers, and outlines policy implications.Publication Leveraging the Potential of Argentine Cities(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2016-10-18)Argentina’s path to economic prosperity is through efficient, sustainable and economically thriving cities. Not only are cities a spatial concentration of people, but also they generate agglomeration economies by concentrating ideas, talent, and knowledge. Argentina is one of the most urbanized countries in Latin America, with 90 percent of Argentine people currently living in cities. Argentina’s cities are geographically and economically diverse, and its largest urban area – Metropolitan Buenos Aires – is one of Latin America’s urban giants. Argentine cities need to address three main challenges to leverage their economic potential. Argentina’s current patterns of urban development are characterized by (a) high primacy and unbalanced regional development, (b) limited global economic footprint of urban economies, with employment concentrated in nontradable and resource intensive sectors, and (c) unplanned low-density urban expansion. Argentine cities thus face the challenges of moving toward a more balanced regional development, transitioning from local to global cities, and from urban sprawl to articulated densities to take full advantage of the benefits of agglomeration economies. To address these challenges, Argentina needs the leadership of the federal government; the coordinating power of provinces; and the capacity of empowered, financially sound municipalities. Argentine cities also need system-wide policy reforms in areas such as territorial planning, municipal finance, housing, urban transport, and local economic development. Leveraging the Potential of Argentine Cities: A Framework for Policy Action aims to deepen our empirical understanding of the interplay between urbanization and agglomeration economies in Argentina by asking the following: (a) What are the main trends and spatial patterns of Argentina’s urbanization that underlie agglomeration economies?, (b) Are urban policies leveraging or undermining the benefits of agglomeration economies?, and (c) Are Argentine cities fully reaping the benefits of agglomeration economies to deliver improvements in prosperity and livability? By addressing such questions and exploring their implications for action, this study provides a conceptual framework, empirical data, and strategic directions for leveraging the potential of Argentine cities.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Labor Market Policies under a Youth Bulge : How to Benefit from Demographic Dividend in Pakistan(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-12)This paper assesses labor market trends and outcomes in Pakistan over the past decade. It shows that despite a high rate of employment growth, labor market outcomes have been disappointing: most jobs have been created in low productivity sectors/activities, and even if they provide a minimum level of income to often avoid poverty, they remain low quality jobs providing little or no protection to workers against shocks. In addition, female participation rates for women are very low and there are large income disparities between rural and urban areas, and across sectors. A fundamental part of the problem is the low level of education of the labor force. Pakistan is currently in the midst of a demographic transition that is bringing a growing number of youth into the labor market. This youth bulge that is unwinding opens both challenges and opportunities. Challenges because of the need to create enough jobs to employ new entrants; Opportunities, because if this is done the country will enjoy a demographic dividend , as the share of those employed relative to the dependent increases, driving up income per capita and standards of living.Publication Youth Employment : A Human Development Agenda for the Next Decade(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-06)This paper reviews the main challenges facing countries in attempting to improve labor market outcomes among youth, focusing on the issues that became starkly visible during the recent financial crisis. In order to better identify and set up human development interventions, the paper proposes an agenda that focuses on three areas: (1) improving the understanding of the causes and consequences of poor labor market outcomes for youth; (2) continuing to learn from the evaluation of pilots and programs that aim to promote productive employment among young people; and (3) addressing implementation issues which frequently overwhelm the best designs. The paper utilizes research on youth employment to take stock of youth labor market outcomes across regions, focusing on inactivity, unemployment, and employment indicators. A review of what is known about current interventions, including those that appear in the youth employment Inventory database of programs, provides the basis for determining the efficacy of five categories of intervention: (i) skills training (including vocational training, on-the-job-training programs, literacy and numeracy programs, second-chance and equivalency programs, and soft-skills programs); (ii) entrepreneurship promotion (financial assistance, technical assistance, and entrepreneurship training); (iii) subsidized employment (including wage subsidy programs, public works, and public/community service programs); (iv) employment services (including search assistance and access to labor market information, job counseling and placement services, and financial assistance for job search); and (v) reforms to labor market regulation (including anti-discrimination legislation) training programs, wage subsidies. Finally, the paper proposes an agenda for research and policy analysis in the area of human development that is expected to help both deepen the understanding of youth employment issues and improve the selection, design, and implementation of youth employment programs.Publication Africa Development Indicators 2008-09 : Youth and Employment in Africa--The Potential, the Problem, the Promise(Washington, DC, 2009)The first part of the report presents stylized facts of youth and labor markets in Africa. The second part discusses past youth employment interventions in the region. It argues for the need of an integrated approach should governments want to tackle youth employment issues in a sustainable manner. Indeed, in African countries, with large informal sectors and dominance of rural population, solely reforming labor market institutions and implementing active labor market policies are likely to have limited impact. It argues that the most needed and well-rounded approaches are: expanding job and education alternatives in the rural areas, where most youth live; promoting and encouraging mobility; creating a conducive business environment; encouraging the private sector; improving the access and quality of skills formation; taking care of demographic issues that more directly affects the youth; and reducing child labor.Publication Job Creation in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Situations(World Bank Group, Washington, DC, 2014-10)This paper presents a comprehensive review of the operations that the World Bank has supported to create jobs and promote employment in fragile and conflict-affected situations. A novel approach to identifying projects is presented that enables searching for projects based on stated development objectives, regardless of the sector of the project. Of a sample of 2,166 projects funded by the International Development Association, this resulted in the identification of 98 projects that have specific job creation and employment generation development objectives. Among these projects, 51 percent of countries appearing on the list between 2004 and 2012 have implemented projects. Detailed textual analysis is carried out on the project descriptions and indicators to evaluate how well projects are aligned to the context. The results suggest there is a lack of measurement on outcomes that are particularly relevant for fragile and conflict-affected situations, such as the development of social cohesion, reintegration of those involved or affected by violence, impacts jobs have on the willingness to engage in violence or conflict, perceptions of government accountability, and equitable access to these economic opportunities. Quantitative analysis of the portfolio indicates that there are also systematic differences in the size and resources associated with job creation projects in countries with fragile and conflict-affected situations relative to similar projects in other International Development Association-borrowing countries. Given the mixed empirical evidence on the relationship between jobs and conflict, this report calls for more methodological measurement of the impacts of these programs on stabilization outcomes in the future.Publication The Impact of an Adolescent Girls Employment Program : The EPAG Project in Liberia(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-04)This paper presents findings from the impact evaluation of the Economic Empowerment of Adolescent Girls and Young Women (EPAG) project in Liberia. The EPAG project was launched by the Liberian Ministry of Gender and Development in 2009 with the goal of increasing the employment and income of 2,500 young Liberian women by providing livelihood and life skills training and facilitating their transition to productive work. The analysis in this paper is based on data collected during two rounds of quantitative surveys in 2010 and 2011, the second of which was conducted six months after the classroom-based phase of the training program ended. Strong impacts are found on the employment and earnings outcomes of program participants, relative to a control group of non-participants. The EPAG program increased employment by 47 percent and earnings by 80 percent. In addition, the impact evaluation documents positive effects on a variety of empowerment measures, including access to money, self-confidence, and anxiety about circumstances and the future. The evaluation finds no net impact on fertility or sexual behavior. At the household level, there is evidence of improved food security and shifting attitudes toward gender norms. These results reinforce the highly positive feedback received from focus group discussions with program participants. Finally, preliminary cost-benefit analysis indicates that the budgetary cost of the EPAG business development training for young women is equivalent to the value of three years of the increase in income among program beneficiaries. These preliminary results provide strong evidence for further investment and research into young women's livelihood programs in Liberia.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Lebanon Economic Monitor, Fall 2022(Washington, DC, 2022-11)The economy continues to contract, albeit at a somewhat slower pace. Public finances improved in 2021, but only because spending collapsed faster than revenue generation. Testament to the continued atrophy of Lebanon’s economy, the Lebanese Pound continues to depreciate sharply. The sharp deterioration in the currency continues to drive surging inflation, in triple digits since July 2020, impacting the poor and vulnerable the most. An unprecedented institutional vacuum will likely further delay any agreement on crisis resolution and much needed reforms; this includes prior actions as part of the April 2022 International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff-level agreement (SLA). Divergent views among key stakeholders on how to distribute the financial losses remains the main bottleneck for reaching an agreement on a comprehensive reform agenda. Lebanon needs to urgently adopt a domestic, equitable, and comprehensive solution that is predicated on: (i) addressing upfront the balance sheet impairments, (ii) restoring liquidity, and (iii) adhering to sound global practices of bail-in solutions based on a hierarchy of creditors (starting with banks’ shareholders) that protects small depositors.Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Argentina Country Climate and Development Report(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11)The Argentina Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) explores opportunities and identifies trade-offs for aligning Argentina’s growth and poverty reduction policies with its commitments on, and its ability to withstand, climate change. It assesses how the country can: reduce its vulnerability to climate shocks through targeted public and private investments and adequation of social protection. The report also shows how Argentina can seize the benefits of a global decarbonization path to sustain a more robust economic growth through further development of Argentina’s potential for renewable energy, energy efficiency actions, the lithium value chain, as well as climate-smart agriculture (and land use) options. Given Argentina’s context, this CCDR focuses on win-win policies and investments, which have large co-benefits or can contribute to raising the country’s growth while helping to adapt the economy, also considering how human capital actions can accompany a just transition.Publication World Development Report 2006(Washington, DC, 2005)This year’s Word Development Report (WDR), the twenty-eighth, looks at the role of equity in the development process. It defines equity in terms of two basic principles. The first is equal opportunities: that a person’s chances in life should be determined by his or her talents and efforts, rather than by pre-determined circumstances such as race, gender, social or family background. The second principle is the avoidance of extreme deprivation in outcomes, particularly in health, education and consumption levels. This principle thus includes the objective of poverty reduction. The report’s main message is that, in the long run, the pursuit of equity and the pursuit of economic prosperity are complementary. In addition to detailed chapters exploring these and related issues, the Report contains selected data from the World Development Indicators 2005‹an appendix of economic and social data for over 200 countries. This Report offers practical insights for policymakers, executives, scholars, and all those with an interest in economic development.