waithood

They are known as "waithood" - the young people forced to spend the best years of their life waiting for a job, a salary and a house.

Waithood is applicable only to college educated people who are not compelled to settle in blue collar jobs due to the support from family elders or resources.

One commentator argues, waithood can be best understood by examining outcomes and linkages across five different sectors: education, employment, housing, credit, and marriage.

Because of this gap 70% of Jordanian youth who are one year out of school are still unemployed and caught in the period of waithood.

See: Hypergamy, Waithood.

Jake Wallis Simons, centre, on his travels in Ghana, reporting on the phenomenon 'waithood'.

Even university graduates are unable to move from childhood to adulthood; they're struggling for so long that a Ghanaian academic has labelled this stage of life Waithood.

Waithood is considered to be a difficult and unpleasant period in life; without work, young people are unable to progress in other areas of their development, such as purchasing a home and getting married.

The Initiative performs vigorous research on issues pertaining to regional youth (ages 15-29) on the topics of Youth Exclusion, education, employment, marriage, housing, and credit, and on the ways in which all of these elements are linked during young people's experience of waithood.

Consequences of youth exclusion in MENA have included young people entering waithood, a period during which they simply wait for their lives to begin, most notably by queuing for long periods of unemployment during which they live with parents and are financially unable to pursue marriage or home ownership.