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Articles on Youth in Australia

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A healthy youth is critical for laying the solid foundations required for a long-term healthy lifestyle. Flickr: Jose Javier Martin Espartosa

Healthy youth is key to a healthy life but Australia remains behind

Adolescence is supposed to be the healthiest of times in our lives. But open any newspaper and you’re likely to find an article about the health problems of today’s youth. Whether it’s drugs or alcohol-fuelled…
Whether you grow up in public housing flats or the leafy suburbs makes a difference, but it need not set children’s destiny in stone. AAP/Dean Lewins

Life chances: policy must respond to the real lives of young people

Life is unpredictable. Individual lives are complicated and this seems to be a problem for policy makers. It is important our understanding of the life course is reflected effectively in policy so that…
Australian youth is at risk of being locked out of the housing market, and a significant number are falling through the gaps of the rental market. AAP/David Crosling

Crowded housing market gives youth little chance for independence

It’s Saturday morning in West Brunswick, a suburb in Melbourne’s inner north. From my bedroom window I can see a crowd gathering across the road for a house inspection. The crowd swells to 60 or so people…
A fashion program is one of the many effective alternative pathways to education and work offered by The Social Studio. flickr/Alpha

Ensuring young people in all walks of life ‘earn or learn’ costs money

Why do young people drop out of school? Many factors influence this critical decision. These include the cost of education (think rising fees, cost of transportation, materials, textbooks and uniforms…
Young Australians are significantly less willing than the rest of the population to register and turn out to vote. AAP/Tracey Nearmy

Our democracy is the loser when voices of youth are marginalised

In the current political environment, young people are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Typically stereotyped as having an inflated sense of entitlement, uninterested in civic participation…
More than one-third of unemployed people are aged 15 to 24, a critical period in their lives. luxorphoto/Shutterstock

Unemployment is hitting youth hard: this is what we should do

Australia came out of the global financial crisis better than most industrialised countries, but did not escape altogether. With a weaker economy, the unemployment rate rose from about 4% to 6% between…
Can the concept of a generation cover all the diverse people of a certain age cohort in an intellectually useful way? Artens/Shutterstock

Talkin’ ‘bout a generation: understanding youth and change

Making sense of what is happening in our own time requires sharp thinking. Today, however, catch-phrases and clichés abound. More specifically we rely on cliches about generations. Journalists, bestselling…
The uncertainties of young Australians’ lives already present many challenges. Any harm done by making things tougher cannot easily be undone. Flickr/Bernard Oh

Pain now, rewards later? Young lives cannot be relived

The federal government’s proposed budget measures are particularly harsh on young people, particularly the most vulnerable. A raft of measures, if introduced, will reduce young people’s access to income…
Media depictions like Young, Lazy and Driving Us Crazy pander to negative perceptions of young Australians. Channel Seven

Images of Australian youth: from symbols of hope to disposable lives

The idea of a generation gap is an old one, but the discrepancies between young people’s lived experience and other people’s perceptions present a very contemporary challenge. Today The Conversation begins…

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