Abstract:
This paper develops and validates a Youth Multidimensional Vulnerability Index (YMVI) for South Africa using nationally representative panel data from the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS). Applying the Alkire-Foster dual cut-off methodology, the YMVI measures intersecting deprivations across household financial burden, labour market orientation, mental wellbeing, and social networks. Nearly 90 percent of NEET youth are identified as multidimensionally vulnerable at baseline, at substantially higher prevalence and intensity than peers in employment, education, or training. This gap is statistically significant and invariant across a comprehensive sensitivity analysis encompassing alternative domain structures, weighting schemes, and deprivation cut-offs. Critically, baseline vulnerability is a robust predictor of NEET status nine to ten years later, with vulnerability coefficients remaining stable and significant even after controlling for baseline NEET status. It is the depth and breadth of intersecting capability deprivations, not NEET status at a point in time, that primarily determines whether disengagement is transient or chronic. The YMVI thereby offers an empirically grounded basis for multidimensional triage in youth employment programming, identifying young people facing structural barriers to labour market and education and training engagement, rather than those who merely happen to be disengaged when assessed.
