placestats

Researchers vs. Youth not in work or study

Fades after adjusting for income

Across 123 countries, Researchers and Youth not in work or study rise and fall together at r = -0.56 (on a scale from −1 to +1, where 0 means no link). Comparing only countries with similar income (GDP per person) shrinks it to -0.28, which could easily be chance (q = 0.058, allowing for the many pairs tested, and allowing for countries in the same region being alike). So the first figure mostly shows richer countries differing from poorer ones, not a link between these two things.

Comparing countries across the middle half of researchers, 138 to 3,580 per million people, youth not in work or study is better by 8.13% of 15 to 24 year olds at the top of that range than the bottom. Comparing only countries with similar national income, the gap is 4.95% of 15 to 24 year olds.

Link before adjusting (r)-0.558p = 2.0e-11 · 123 countries
After adjusting for national income-0.284p = 0.002 · likely range [-0.44, -0.11]
p, allowing for regions0.007standard error 0.070 · 7 regions
Check for luck (q)0.058across 12,497 pairs

How to read these.r runs from −1 (one goes up as the other goes down) to +1 (they rise together), and 0 means no link. Adjusting for national income means comparing countries with the same GDP per person, so differences in wealth can’t explain the link. Income is used in percentage terms, since an extra $1,000 means more to a poor country than to a rich one. p is how likely a link this strong would be if there were really none. Below 0.05 means it is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 1.1e-32 means a decimal point followed by 31 zeros and then 11, so very close to zero. The likely range is where the true figure probably lies, and a range that crosses zero means the link could easily be chance. Countries in the same region tend to resemble each other, so the third figure allows for that, which gives a fairer p. The standard error is the typical size of the error in r. Finally, testing this many pairs means some will look strong by luck alone. A q below 0.05 means this link is unlikely to be one of those.

Researchers · per million peoplelink with income +0.85 · proxy
Youth not in work or study · % of 15 to 24 year oldslink with income -0.63 · high

Both of these rise and fall closely with national income, so a strong link between them before adjusting was close to certain. Read the adjusted figure, not the first one.

“Link with income” is how closely each measure tracks GDP per person across countries, from −1 to +1.

Every country as a dot

Researchers · per million people →Youth not in work or study · % of 15 to 24 year olds →1.458,9113.14%65.7%Angola: 18.9 per million people, 24.9% of 15 to 24 year oldsAlbania: 429 per million people, 21% of 15 to 24 year oldsUnited Arab Emirates: 2,607 per million people, 8.92% of 15 to 24 year oldsArgentina: 1,313 per million people, 15.2% of 15 to 24 year oldsArmenia: 942 per million people, 20.2% of 15 to 24 year oldsAustralia: 4,569 per million people, 8.53% of 15 to 24 year oldsAustria: 6,634 per million people, 13.4% of 15 to 24 year oldsAzerbaijan: 1,663 per million people, 9.64% of 15 to 24 year oldsBurundi: 22.5 per million people, 11.2% of 15 to 24 year oldsBelgium: 5,990 per million people, 8.15% of 15 to 24 year oldsBurkina Faso: 46.6 per million people, 24.5% of 15 to 24 year oldsBulgaria: 2,401 per million people, 10.9% of 15 to 24 year oldsBosnia and Herzegovina: 705 per million people, 14.3% of 15 to 24 year oldsBelarus: 1,568 per million people, 65.7% of 15 to 24 year oldsBolivia: 63.1 per million people, 8.02% of 15 to 24 year oldsBrazil: 903 per million people, 18.7% of 15 to 24 year oldsBrunei Darussalam: 506 per million people, 19% of 15 to 24 year oldsBhutan: 236 per million people, 15.3% of 15 to 24 year oldsBotswana: 180 per million people, 38% of 15 to 24 year oldsCanada: 5,624 per million people, 13.3% of 15 to 24 year oldsSwitzerland: 6,108 per million people, 6.99% of 15 to 24 year oldsChile: 707 per million people, 13.4% of 15 to 24 year oldsCongo, Dem. Rep.: 10.1 per million people, 31.4% of 15 to 24 year oldsColombia: 90.2 per million people, 22% of 15 to 24 year oldsCabo Verde: 125 per million people, 28% of 15 to 24 year oldsCosta Rica: 508 per million people, 19.4% of 15 to 24 year oldsCyprus: 1,686 per million people, 13.2% of 15 to 24 year oldsCzechia: 4,505 per million people, 4.62% of 15 to 24 year oldsGermany: 5,926 per million people, 7.58% of 15 to 24 year oldsDenmark: 8,838 per million people, 6.9% of 15 to 24 year oldsDominican Republic: 20 per million people, 24.7% of 15 to 24 year oldsAlgeria: 1,764 per million people, 20.9% of 15 to 24 year oldsEcuador: 400 per million people, 17.7% of 15 to 24 year oldsEgypt, Arab Rep.: 1,120 per million people, 23.8% of 15 to 24 year oldsSpain: 3,654 per million people, 10.5% of 15 to 24 year oldsEstonia: 4,800 per million people, 10.2% of 15 to 24 year oldsEthiopia: 89 per million people, 17.5% of 15 to 24 year oldsFinland: 8,315 per million people, 8.28% of 15 to 24 year oldsFrance: 5,369 per million people, 12.6% of 15 to 24 year oldsUnited Kingdom: 4,473 per million people, 14.4% of 15 to 24 year oldsGeorgia: 1,896 per million people, 14.7% of 15 to 24 year oldsGhana: 87.5 per million people, 23.9% of 15 to 24 year oldsGambia, The: 50.9 per million people, 36.5% of 15 to 24 year oldsGreece: 5,283 per million people, 10.4% of 15 to 24 year oldsGuatemala: 1.45 per million people, 24% of 15 to 24 year oldsHong Kong SAR, China: 5,874 per million people, 5.95% of 15 to 24 year oldsHonduras: 188 per million people, 29% of 15 to 24 year oldsCroatia: 2,440 per million people, 8.08% of 15 to 24 year oldsHungary: 4,567 per million people, 9.98% of 15 to 24 year oldsIndonesia: 395 per million people, 21.4% of 15 to 24 year oldsIndia: 259 per million people, 25.6% of 15 to 24 year oldsIreland: 5,753 per million people, 5.67% of 15 to 24 year oldsIran, Islamic Rep.: 2,240 per million people, 24.3% of 15 to 24 year oldsIraq: 164 per million people, 36.9% of 15 to 24 year oldsIceland: 5,953 per million people, 3.98% of 15 to 24 year oldsItaly: 2,855 per million people, 12% of 15 to 24 year oldsJordan: 576 per million people, 29.4% of 15 to 24 year oldsJapan: 5,609 per million people, 3.14% of 15 to 24 year oldsKazakhstan: 758 per million people, 9.49% of 15 to 24 year oldsKenya: 384 per million people, 18.5% of 15 to 24 year oldsCambodia: 30.4 per million people, 6.32% of 15 to 24 year oldsSri Lanka: 94.5 per million people, 17.2% of 15 to 24 year oldsLesotho: 32.2 per million people, 38% of 15 to 24 year oldsLithuania: 3,704 per million people, 14.9% of 15 to 24 year oldsLuxembourg: 5,359 per million people, 10.2% of 15 to 24 year oldsLatvia: 2,191 per million people, 9.89% of 15 to 24 year oldsMacao SAR, China: 4,634 per million people, 4.96% of 15 to 24 year oldsMorocco: 1,083 per million people, 35.3% of 15 to 24 year oldsMoldova: 650 per million people, 9.05% of 15 to 24 year oldsMadagascar: 32.9 per million people, 24.3% of 15 to 24 year oldsMexico: 438 per million people, 16.2% of 15 to 24 year oldsNorth Macedonia: 888 per million people, 19.5% of 15 to 24 year oldsMali: 26 per million people, 30.1% of 15 to 24 year oldsMalta: 2,355 per million people, 7.84% of 15 to 24 year oldsMyanmar: 28 per million people, 15% of 15 to 24 year oldsMontenegro: 764 per million people, 14.2% of 15 to 24 year oldsMongolia: 535 per million people, 9.9% of 15 to 24 year oldsMozambique: 44.4 per million people, 19.2% of 15 to 24 year oldsMauritius: 689 per million people, 13.9% of 15 to 24 year oldsMalawi: 25.2 per million people, 39.4% of 15 to 24 year oldsMalaysia: 1,218 per million people, 10.2% of 15 to 24 year oldsNamibia: 225 per million people, 31.9% of 15 to 24 year oldsNiger: 26.9 per million people, 15.7% of 15 to 24 year oldsNigeria: 22.1 per million people, 11.9% of 15 to 24 year oldsNetherlands: 6,563 per million people, 4.14% of 15 to 24 year oldsNorway: 7,451 per million people, 5.82% of 15 to 24 year oldsNew Zealand: 5,435 per million people, 12.8% of 15 to 24 year oldsOman: 739 per million people, 25.5% of 15 to 24 year oldsPakistan: 474 per million people, 28.5% of 15 to 24 year oldsPanama: 250 per million people, 15.1% of 15 to 24 year oldsPhilippines: 320 per million people, 12.4% of 15 to 24 year oldsPapua New Guinea: 33.2 per million people, 27.7% of 15 to 24 year oldsPoland: 3,675 per million people, 10.1% of 15 to 24 year oldsPuerto Rico (US): 332 per million people, 19.5% of 15 to 24 year oldsPortugal: 5,983 per million people, 7.02% of 15 to 24 year oldsParaguay: 139 per million people, 18.6% of 15 to 24 year oldsWest Bank and Gaza: 584 per million people, 25.8% of 15 to 24 year oldsRomania: 1,082 per million people, 17% of 15 to 24 year oldsRussian Federation: 2,639 per million people, 6.68% of 15 to 24 year oldsRwanda: 133 per million people, 15.3% of 15 to 24 year oldsSaudi Arabia: 1,235 per million people, 16.4% of 15 to 24 year oldsSenegal: 572 per million people, 35.2% of 15 to 24 year oldsSingapore: 8,782 per million people, 6.46% of 15 to 24 year oldsEl Salvador: 55.5 per million people, 20.5% of 15 to 24 year oldsSerbia: 2,688 per million people, 12.7% of 15 to 24 year oldsSlovak Republic: 3,507 per million people, 8.75% of 15 to 24 year oldsSlovenia: 5,616 per million people, 7.13% of 15 to 24 year oldsSweden: 8,911 per million people, 5.58% of 15 to 24 year oldsEswatini: 138 per million people, 36.5% of 15 to 24 year oldsChad: 56.7 per million people, 42.3% of 15 to 24 year oldsTogo: 57.8 per million people, 13% of 15 to 24 year oldsThailand: 1,592 per million people, 12.4% of 15 to 24 year oldsTrinidad and Tobago: 493 per million people, 15.8% of 15 to 24 year oldsTunisia: 1,668 per million people, 22.6% of 15 to 24 year oldsTurkiye: 2,645 per million people, 22.9% of 15 to 24 year oldsTanzania: 19.3 per million people, 12.8% of 15 to 24 year oldsUganda: 81.3 per million people, 13.8% of 15 to 24 year oldsUkraine: 586 per million people, 16.5% of 15 to 24 year oldsUruguay: 938 per million people, 14% of 15 to 24 year oldsUnited States: 4,937 per million people, 11.6% of 15 to 24 year oldsViet Nam: 836 per million people, 10.3% of 15 to 24 year oldsSouth Africa: 444 per million people, 34.6% of 15 to 24 year oldsZimbabwe: 95.1 per million people, 36% of 15 to 24 year oldsBDIBLRBOLDNKKHMMWISGPSWETCD

best-fit line line after adjusting

Four ways to measure the link

MethodrpCountries
Standard (Pearson), not adjusted-0.5582.0e-11123
By rank (Spearman), not adjusted-0.6561.9e-16123
Standard (Pearson), adjusted for national income-0.2840.002123
By rank (Spearman), adjusted for national income-0.1960.031123

The rank version uses only each country’s place in line, from lowest to highest, so a few extreme countries count for less. The adjusted and unadjusted versions use the same 123 countries: those that report both measures and GDP per person. So the gap between them comes from the adjustment, not from a change in which countries are counted. Drop in the size of r after adjusting: +0.274 (a minus sign means it grew).

How solid is it?

Leaving out one country at a time, r ranges from -0.300 (without BLR) to -0.263 (without BDI). The bar above shows that range on a scale from −1 to +1, with the solid line at the full result. The single country that moves r most: BDI (+0.021).

Within each region

Countries are not separate, unrelated cases, and neighbors share a lot. A link that holds inside each region is far more believable than one that shows up only when comparing regions.

nr
East Asia & Pacific16-0.33
Europe & Central Asia44-0.23
Latin America & Caribbean17-0.27
Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan & Pakistan13-0.62
Sub-Saharan Africa28-0.04

By income third

If the link shows up only in the richest third of countries, it is a feature of rich countries, not a general pattern.

nr
Poorest third41+0.16
Middle third41-0.08
Richest third41-0.58

By largest religious group

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

nr
Christians79-0.34
Muslims27-0.04

By last european coloniser

Countries grouped by a label they share, such as main religion, rather than by a number. Groups of fewer than twelve countries are not shown. These groups differ in income, region and history all at once. So a gap between them is a place to start asking questions, not an answer.

nr
Never a European colony12-0.34
Spain16+0.16
United Kingdom33-0.19

Without outliers (countries far outside the middle half of countries on either measure, by more than one and a half times the width of that middle half): r = -0.299 after dropping 4 countries.

Two series, one country

Both measures over the years for one country you pick. The two charts are stacked so they share only the years along the bottom.

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Over time, within countries

Everything above compares countries with each other at one moment. This section compares each country only with itself over 29years. So a link here can’t come from anything about a country that stays the same, such as its history, geography, institutions or culture.

Within countries over time, there is no link that is clearly more than chance (r = +0.062, comparing each country only with itself over the years, and each year only with the same year elsewhere). Whatever the cross-country picture shows, countries whose researchers moved did not tend to see their youth not in work or study move with it.

Across countries (adjusted)-0.284for comparison
Within countries-0.264each country vs itself
…and vs the same year elsewhere+0.062q = 0.477 · 77 countries
Year-on-year changes+0.024q = 0.388
The direction flips. Comparing each country only with itself gives -0.26. Also taking out what happened to the whole world each year gives +0.06. So the first figure was picking up a trend both measures share with worldwide progress, not a link between them.
Read with care.
  • Much of the within-country association disappears once shared global year effects are removed, which points to a common worldwide trend rather than a country-level relationship.

1,311 country-years (one country in one year), 77 countries, 1996–2024, about 17 years each on average. Share of the variation that happens within countries over time: 13% for Researchers, 18% for Youth not in work or study. The margins of error allow for each country appearing many times, and for each year’s value being close to the year before.

Year-to-year changes are a cautious test, not a final answer. Looking only at changes from one year to the next removes each country’s own trends. But it also makes measurement mistakes louder, which pulls the results toward zero. A near-zero result here is weak evidence of no link, not proof.

With one measure years behind the other

0.20−0.2-100+10years Youth not in work or study trails Researchers →lag -10: r = 0.069 (n = 824)lag -9: r = 0.040 (n = 886)lag -8: r = 0.049 (n = 950)lag -7: r = 0.045 (n = 1,004)lag -6: r = 0.039 (n = 1,069)lag -5: r = 0.057 (n = 1,116)lag -4: r = 0.018 (n = 1,172)lag -3: r = 0.023 (n = 1,204)lag -2: r = 0.016 (n = 1,238)lag -1: r = 0.046 (n = 1,275)lag +0: r = 0.062 (n = 1,311)lag +1: r = 0.096 (n = 1,330)lag +2: r = 0.127 (n = 1,302)lag +3: r = 0.125 (n = 1,278)lag +4: r = 0.136 (n = 1,225)lag +5: r = 0.131 (n = 1,187)lag +6: r = 0.147 (n = 1,119)lag +7: r = 0.134 (n = 1,079)lag +8: r = 0.120 (n = 1,021)lag +9: r = 0.119 (n = 967)lag +10: r = 0.120 (n = 912)

Same year (lag 0): +0.062. A peak away from zero does not show which comes first. These series change slowly — this year’s value is close to last year’s. That makes the curve smooth and nearly symmetric, whatever produced the data. Even a sharp peak at one lag (a gap of some years) would not prove that one measure changes the other.

The largest value on this curve (+0.15 at lag +6) is higher than the same-year one by 0.08. That gap is not a finding. It is the largest of 21 closely related estimates, and picking the biggest of many tests always makes it look bigger. That is exactly why nothing on this site is ranked or chosen by lag.

The data


per million people
% of 15 to 24 year olds		Years
Sweden SWE8,9115.58%2023, 2024
Denmark DNK8,8386.9%2023, 2024
Singapore SGP8,7826.46%2022, 2025
Finland FIN8,3158.28%2023, 2024
Norway NOR7,4515.82%2023, 2024
Austria AUT6,63413.4%2023, 2025
Netherlands NLD6,5634.14%2023, 2024
Switzerland CHE6,1086.99%2023, 2025
Belgium BEL5,9908.15%2023, 2024
Portugal PRT5,9837.02%2023, 2025
Iceland ISL5,9533.98%2023, 2024
Germany DEU5,9267.58%2023, 2024
Hong Kong SAR, China HKG5,8745.95%2024, 2025
Ireland IRL5,7535.67%2023, 2024
Canada CAN5,62413.3%2022, 2025

World Bank, World Development Indicators
World Bank, World Development Indicators

Sources

Researchers

Researchers in R&D (per million people)

UNESCO Institute for Statistics · CC BY 4.0 · updated quarterly

Researchers counted as full-time equivalents (two half-time researchers count as one), from national research surveys that many countries run only now and then. So coverage is thin outside the OECD.

Youth not in work or study

Share of youth not in education, employment or training, total (% of youth population)

International Labour Organization · CC BY 4.0 · updated quarterly

From labour force surveys, so yearly for about a hundred countries and occasional elsewhere.

How this was computed

Data used: most recent value in 2010-2025; values come from 2010–2025. To adjust for income, each measure is first predicted from GDP per person (in percentage terms, on a log scale) with a straight-line fit. Only what is left over is then compared. This is called a partial correlation. The line is drawn the standard way (ordinary least squares), which picks the line that comes closest to all the countries at once. The error margins allow for countries in the same region resembling each other, using 7 World Bank regions. The q-value corrects for testing all 12,497 pairs at once, using the Benjamini–Hochberg method. Underlying data last updated DYB 2024. How the country data works · explore Researchers and Youth not in work or study

This page shows that two measures go together. It does not show that Researchers changes Youth not in work or study, or the reverse. These figures also describe countries, not individual people. See the ecological fallacy.

More links with Researchers or Youth not in work or study