Introduction

Young people are at a stage in life when their financial situation is often strained. Setting up one's own home, getting established in the labour market, and having children and being on a low income are clearly related to financial problems. Young people tend not to have accumulated financial resources, and have therefore a high poverty risk (Julkunen, 2000). Long-term unemployment in this age group may accelerate a development towards poverty and welfare dependency. There is a need for comparative knowledge of contrasting policies and outcomes of different welfare models in Europe. The aim of this chapter is to analyse and compare the financial circumstances of young unemployed people in six different European countries – Denmark, Finland, Norway, Scotland, Spain and Italy – to study how different welfare arrangements influence the risk of financial marginalisation among unemployed youth. The countries represent three different clusters with similar welfare strategies: a Nordic model of advanced institutional welfare (Finland, Denmark and Norway); a model with moderate institutional and family arrangements in combination with corporate social protection (Scotland); and a southern European model with welfare strategies relying on the family as the prime source of welfare (Spain and Italy) (Vogel, 1997). How have young people survived unemployment? To what extent does financial deprivation prevail among them and are there different outcomes in countries with different strategies? The study draws on comparative surveys among representative samples of unemployed 18- to 24-year-olds who had been unemployed for at least three months continuously and were interviewed 12 months later in 10 countries across Europe.

Relative deprivation

Today, the young face a restructured labour market, an increased demand for qualifications and flexibility in the workplace, and cuts in social benefits that extend the period in which they remain dependent on their families. The changing structural context for the young can be seen in the way that the pattern of poverty has changed, as there has been a marked shift in the composition of the poor, away from older towards younger households. The pattern of higher poverty rates among young people appears to be a general trend all over Europe, (Vogel, 1997). The only exception seems to be the UK, where poverty rates are higher among middle-age groups. Deprivation is also an important concept in the analysis of social conditions and should be distinguished from poverty.