Youth Employment Programs - Independent Evaluation Group

Management ResponseIntroductionWorld Bank Group Management welcomes this Independent Evaluation Group(IEG) review of Bank support to youth employment programs and thanks IEGstaff for the close dialogue with management and staff during its preparation.Given the heightened scrutiny of these issues by global policymakers,this evaluation will help focus our efforts and work more effectively to deliverservices demanded by World Bank Group clients to address these concerns.Policymakers around the world have become increasingly concerned by theevents of the Arab Spring as well as the unsustainably high rates of youthunemployment and disaffection in Europe and elsewhere. The report correctlynotes the growing populations of “NEETS” (the English term for “not in education,employment, or training”). There is a common fear that the growingpool of young people, without established roots or place, and without voice,will express their frustration in violence and rebellion. They certainly can, incertain circumstances, if other social, political, and economic institutions areweak or absent. But this is not the most important reason for concern. As thereport notes, youth unemployment matters for welfare, for equity, for productivityand growth, for personal and collective identity, and for social cohesion.The costs of prolonged unemployment in youth, or delayed entry intowork, are potentially enormous in terms of lifetime earnings and well-being.Management provided detailed comments to IEG on the first draft and itis pleased most of its suggestions were incorporated in the final draft. Thefirst section of this note sets out comments from World Bank Management;the second section provides comments from International Finance Corporation(IFC) Management. Following this text is the draft Management ActionRecord (Annex 1).World Bank Management CommentsAny review of programs that assist young people to enter the labor market iscomplicated by a number of factors. First, the broad scope of possible constraintsand interventions relating to youth employment necessitate complexand coordinated responses. Second, many Bank activities that are likely toaffect youth employment may not have this as a specific objective, and maytherefore not be included in this evaluation due to difficulties of disentanglingtheir specific impact on youth. Finally, relatively few Bank interventionsthat have reached the stage at which results are measurable since thevolume of lending linked to youth interventions increased substantially onlyin 2009-10 after the 2007 World Development Report (WDR) on Developmentand the Next Generation. The report recognizes these constraints (in particularthat the paucity of data limits the ability to assess the impact of BankManagement Response xix