With youth demographic bulges, existing high levels of youth underutilization and
limited job creation occurring in many developing countries, governments and development
actors are actively exploring new approaches to enabling youth to obtain sustainable
livelihoods. There is a growing consensus that increasing the ability of youth to access
financial services and strengthening their ability to use these services for their future life needs
can play a direct role in supporting the transition to employment and better livelihoods. This
report seeks to determine the extent to which this consensus is borne out in practice.
Specifically, the report takes stock of existing research and examines new evidence, in an
effort to promote a better understanding of the linkages between levels of financial inclusion
among youth and their successful integration into the labour market through wage jobs and
self-employment. It is anticipated that insights from this study will augment the small but
growing body of research on the subject.
This report was commissioned by the ILO’s Work4Youth (W4Y) project, a partnership
between the ILO Youth Employment Programme and The MasterCard Foundation. The
primary objective of the partnership is to produce more and better labour market information,
specific to youth in developing countries, focusing in particular on transition pathways into
the labour market. The project is built around the implementation and analysis of the ILO’s
school-to-work transition surveys (SWTS) – household surveys targeting the youth population
(aged 15 to 29) now available for 34 countries worldwide.