Young people is our hope. This is one  the reasons  why we have children and work to give them a better life. We expect that when they become adult they will take the baton we pass as getting older. An that they will perform a better race. However, I am not very sure that we can follow in a permanent progress. It is emerging the belief that the next generations are not going to be so prosperous. It is clear young people are enjoying a superb standard of living in developed countries, but it does not happen the same in other places. Before the crisis, so many emerging economies had the conditions to increase the prosperity of young people. An economic growth above the 6 % seemed to be a guarantee to distribute money and resources to everybody, and specially to the young, who have the task of pushing economy to better levels. It did not work. Those countries have lost a unique opportunity to establish a strong basis for prosperity. As the economic situation is getting worse, it is difficult to renew the chance. And we know stability and prosperity are needed to move young away from fanatism and theocratic regimes and approach to democracy.

A recent report from researcher of the Brookings Institution points out that Middle East countries have not made profit of their economic resources to increase the welfare of young people. In Young People in Middle East Countries, the authors say that

«A vital lesson of the boom years is that macro-economic improvements alone will not erase the deep inequities that divide the older and younger generations. Institutions in education, employment, and housing and credit markets often work against the welfare of young people and are responsible for their exclusion».
The work finds that young people in those countries has worsened their situation when they go to adulthood. Despite having better qualifications, they do not get good jobs.  «They continue to wait for good jobs, enduring long spells of unemployment or spending their most productive years trapped in informal jobs that fail to prepare them for better positions». The consequence is that in the Middle East, unemployment rate for people between 15 and 24 years old is around 25 percent. And if you integrate this data into the larger population, the fact is young people represents more than the 50 percent of the whole unemployed citizens. The authors of the report think social institutions have not been able to provide the adequate environment to the development of educational skills. With the aim of changing the situation, they propose several policy iniciativas which are summarised in the following chart.
policyproposals

I believe we have to consider these points as educations in Western countries is not enjoying its best times. Some of the problems highlighted in the report could be applied, for example, to Mediterranean developed nations.