Maryam Ghazinejad; Kiana Kalhour; Fatemeh Rahnama
Volume 14, Issue 29 , December 2015, , Pages 49-76
Abstract
Opening the "population window" by young people born in 1980s (baby boom) in Iran, as an transitional and changing society over the last decades, has resulted challenges for youth welfare and national development, instead of golden opportunity to benefit them, due to lack of earlier and long term planning ...
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Opening the "population window" by young people born in 1980s (baby boom) in Iran, as an transitional and changing society over the last decades, has resulted challenges for youth welfare and national development, instead of golden opportunity to benefit them, due to lack of earlier and long term planning and policies to support the young generation's needs in life cycle (from childhood to adults). In this context, measurement and providing a comprehensive image of youth situation in Iran, through the new and rights - centered approach named "Social Exclusion/Inclusion" can be useful, as it reveals knowing and assessing youth socio-economic condition and difficulties, moreover, can suggest to policy makers relevant social policies affecting youth affairs. This paper aims to operationalize and apply "social exclusion" to measure Iranian youth deprivations and insufficient social inclusion/integration in social system as objectively and subjectively. Objective social exclusion is operationalized in 3 dimensions: 1- material deprivations 2- lack of basic social rights 3- lack of socio-cultural integration . Subjective social exclusion has been extracted from the gap between youth's expectations and real life. This study is a descriptive- explanatory national survey over years 2012 - 2014. The population consisted of 15-29 years old youths. Using the multi-stage cluster sampling method, 4522 participants were selected from 12 provinces .They received the standard - localized questionnaire. Findings revel that near the half of youth(45%) participants have been suffering objective social exclusion (mean score 34 in a 0-100 grading scale ) over their life course & mean score for subjective social exclusion was about 2 times (68.7%) higher than objective one. Therefore, about half of them (49.2%) had the hard sense of subjective exclusion. Observed differences in levels and dimensions of social exclusion between youths in different groups have been analyzed.