The Impact of the Global Economic and Financial Crisis on the Youth and Children

Abstract

The global economic and financial crisis has grown far larger than first anticipated and has affected the world at unprecedented level. The financial crisis is considered by many economists to be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The down turn in economic productivity that began in the middle of 2007 persisted and was later declared a crisis towards the end of 2008. The economic crisis has ever since culminated into an ongoing slowdown in production indicators in major sectors of industrialized economies.The causes of the crisis were partly a lack of regulation at the financial markets that began in the US but quickly spread to the industrialized, emerging and developing countries. Young people, children, migrants and women workers are the most vulnerable to the current downturn and are all faced with considerable difficulties in integrating in today’s labor market. This trend stands to be exacerbated by the global crisis and if viable solutions are not found, personal development and future employment prospects are threatened for millions of young people.Young people face discrimination, underemployment, low quality education, social exclusion, lack of decent employment, health problems such as HIV/AIDS, fixed-term contracts and temporary jobs and depending on where in the world you live, most of the youth can be found in casual and informal work where they are neither protected by labor law nor benefiting from social safety nets. To fight the negative impact of the global financial crisis, recovery plans, stimulus packages and long-term strategies have been initiated by some governments. But are they adequate to assist and tackle growing unemployment along with the entrance of approximately 45 million new job-seekers in the global labor market every year? Young people are the future and must be put at the center of development. The need to put them first has never been more pivotal. There must be policy measures that can mitigate the effects of the economic crisis on the youth and on child labor.