Objectives of Sustainable Development and Youth Employment in Colombia

The sustainable development goals (SDGs) aim to raise quality employment, gender equity in access to employment and increase coverage in education. However, in Colombia, high unemployment rates and the informality of young people are risks of achieving these goals. The purpose of this research is to estimate the determinants of youth unemployment and its relationship with SDGs Objective 8, and linking it to the objectives of quality education and gender equity. Using the microdata of the Colombian household survey, DANE, this relationship is estimated with a methodology of age, period, and cohort, through a Probit/Logit Multinomial model. As a novel result for the Colombian case, it is shown that, although new generations of young people are more educated, education per se is not enough to guarantee them a quality insertion into the labor market, penalizing, above all, young women. Lack of work experience and segmentation of the labor market would help explain this outcome. Employment policies, therefore, to achieve the SDGs must not only invest in education, but also expand dual education programs, considering gender.