The Arab Young and Restless

Only one high-income region has done a reasonably good job of preparing its youth, and its overall economy, for tough global competition: Northern Europe, including Germany and Scandinavia (Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden). In these countries, public education is excellent, and the transition from school to work often involves programs like the apprenticeships for which Germany is especially famous.

In developing countries, the main advances are found in countries that emphasize excellence in education, public investment in infrastructure, and serious on-the-job training. South Korea is probably the leading success story, with superb educational attainment and strong employment of young people having taken it from developing-country to high-income status within one generation. And South Korea has accomplished this feat in China’s intensely competitive immediate neighborhood.

The US, by contrast, is a case of failure, except for youth from high-income households. American children raised in affluence succeed in obtaining an excellent education and have good job prospects after a bachelor’s degree. But, as the rich have successfully pressed for tax cuts and reductions in government spending, children from poor and working-class households are far less likely to receive a high-quality education, and the US government has failed to provide for training or adequate infrastructure. The result is a growing youth unemployment crisis among poor and working-class youth.

The countries of North Africa and the Middle East should learn from East Asia and Northern Europe, and take pains to avoid the failures of the US. If democracy is to take hold and flourish in Egypt, Tunisia, and elsewhere in the Arab world, the new reform-minded governments must make the youth unemployment crisis their highest priority.

Middle Eastern countries should elaborate strategies to improve the quality and increase the length of schooling, invest in job training, establish private-sector apprenticeships, and develop small and medium-sized businesses. They should identify key infrastructure projects needed to ensure private-sector productivity. And they must work together to deepen regional trade integration, thereby creating a much larger market.

The deposed authoritarian rulers – Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Mubarak, and soon Libya’s Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi – stashed away billions of dollars stolen from the public treasury. This ill-gotten money should be recovered and put into a special fund for youth employment.

Moreover, with oil prices back above $100 per barrel, the Gulf states are enjoying a bonanza. They, too, should create a special fund for youth employment in the region through the Islamic Development Bank. There can be no better way to use the region’s resources than to ensure that its young people’s lives are enriched by education, skills, and high-quality jobs.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is Professor of Economics and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also Special Adviser to United Nations Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011.www.project-syndicate.orgFor a podcast of this commentary in English, please use this link:

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