National report 2009-2019 - Rural NEET in Portugal
This report outlines in detail the situation of rural youths Neither in Employment, nor in Edu-cation or Training (NEET) aged between 15 and 34 years old, over the last decade (2009-2019) in Portugal. To do this, the report portrays indicators of: youth population; youth em-ployment and unemployment; education; and, NEETs distribution. The characterisation of all indicators adopts the degree of urbanisation as a central criterion, thereby enabling propor-tional comparisons between rural areas, towns and suburbs, cities and the whole country. These analyses are further divided into age subgroups and, where possible, into sex groups for greater detail.The statistical procedures adopted across the different selected dimensions involve: des-criptive longitudinal analysis; using graphical displays (e.g., overlay line charts); and, the calculation of proportional absolute and relative changes between 2009 and 2013, 2013 and 2019, and finally 2009 and 2019. These time ranges were chosen to capture the in-dicators evolution before and after the economic crisis which hit European countries. All data was extracted from Eurostat public datasets.The analyses show that between 2009 and 2019 the rural youth population aged 15 to 24 years has been increasing in Portugal. Although the youth unemployment rate is higher in cities, rural areas faced more difficulties in overcoming the effects of the crisis, particularly among young adults aged over 25 years. In the field of education, however, there was an absolute and relative reduction in the proportion of young people with lower qualifications compared with young people in early school leavers in rural areas between 2009-2019, even though it still remains well above the 10% target defined by the Europe 2020 strategy. Finally, the proportion of NEETs in Portugal is higher in rural areas, in all age groups with available data, compared to cities and towns and suburbs, thereby revealing territorial in-equalities in access to employment and education opportunities.