ABSTRACT
Context: Since the creation of the National Youth Policy, not one major study has been conducted to profile young people's socio-economic status in Zambia. On the contrary, several nationally representative surveys and studies have been conducted that document the socio-economic status of the entire population. Within these studies, token attention has been given to profile selected indicators of young peoples' then demographic and socio-economic characteristics.

Methods: Data from the 2001-20002 ZDHS was used to conduct descriptive and logistic regression analyses of 3454 female and 821 male to profile Zambian youth.

Results: More youth are in rural areas compared to urban areas. Among Zambia's nine provinces, the majority of youth are on the Copperbelt province. More young people have completed primary school compared to secondary school. The study found that both female and male rural youth were more likely to have attended secondary school than their urban counterparts. In addition catholic youth were more likely to have secondary school than their protestant counterparts. The data suggests that both female and male youth with two or more children are more likely to be working than those without a child. Having attended secondary school increased the odds of currently working.
Conclusions: Youth development programmes in Zambia must take into account the socioeconomic and demographic profile of youth in order to develop meaningful strategies to issues around youth unemployment, education, social welfare and health.