Investing in Youth - An Empowerment Strategy

The youth is the future, and timely and effective investment in youth is the key to making that future prosperous, both economically and socially. Child poverty and high youth unemployment levels attest to European countries' failure to meet the criteria of successful investment in its youth. An encompassing youth strategy is needed to adequately equip the younger generation for the future; a future that is characterized by rapid changes, the complexities of globalisation, the development of the knowledge society and an ageing population. Demographic trends make the need more pressing: the pressures of supporting a growing elderly population will fall upon a declining number of workers, implying on the one hand the increased importance of their productivity and on the other hand the need to better balance the intergenerational contracts.