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Initiatives to Combat the Labour Market Exclusion of Youth in Northern Europe: A Meta-analysis

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Book cover European Youth Labour Markets

Abstract

We present results from a meta-analysis that compiles studies on labour market programmes targeted at youth below the age of 30 in six selected countries: Denmark, Finland, Germany, Norway, Sweden and the UK. Together they comprise a database with 44 quantitative evaluation studies and 425 observations which fulfil certain criteria with regard to methodology, publication, etc.

Results indicate that labour market training and wage subsidies have a positive impact on youth labour market prospects. Work practice and public employment measures do not. More recent studies tend to give more positive effects, indicating a learning process from previous mistakes. There is no significant difference between short-term and medium- to long-term effects, nor do institutional conditioning factors such as redundancy laws, laws for temporary contracts, etc. seem to matter for the effects of labour market programmes. However, these last findings must be treated with caution as lack of variability might be causing some of the observed patterns.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For an introduction to meta-analysis, see, e.g. Stanley and Doucouliagos (2012).

  2. 2.

    The conclusions of Kluve et al. (2016) are consistent with a recent comprehensive study of youth measures in Europe conducted by Caliendo and Schmidl (2016), but note it is not a meta-analysis.

  3. 3.

    One key issue in evaluation studies is that the counterfactual, i.e. what would have happened in the absence of an intervention, is not observed. Had we had that piece of information, we could have just taken the difference and inferred that that is the impact.

  4. 4.

    Note that we use the terms “positive” and “negative” in a normative – and not a mathematical – sense throughout this paper.

  5. 5.

    We follow OECD index http://www.oecd.org/employment/protection

  6. 6.

    Average marginal effect should not be confused with marginal effect at the mean. The first calculates the marginal effect for each case/observation in the data and calculate the means thereafter, rather than just the marginal effects at the mean value of each variable.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Social Research, Oslo, Norway

    Inés Hardoy & Kristine von Simson

  2. Frisch Centre, Oslo, Norway

    Knut Røed & Tao Zhang

Authors
  1. Inés Hardoy
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  2. Knut Røed
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  3. Kristine von Simson
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  4. Tao Zhang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Inés Hardoy .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics and Economic History, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain

    Miguel Ángel Malo

  2. Department of Sociology and Social Work, University of Valladolid, Segovia, Spain

    Almudena Moreno Mínguez

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Hardoy, I., Røed, K., von Simson, K., Zhang, T. (2018). Initiatives to Combat the Labour Market Exclusion of Youth in Northern Europe: A Meta-analysis. In: Malo, M., Moreno Mínguez, A. (eds) European Youth Labour Markets. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68222-8_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68222-8_16

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-68222-8

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