Out of work. Life adversities and health behaviour in 15-year-olds as predictors of marginalisation from the labour market ten years later.

The main purpose of our Research Council project has been to study if adolescent mental and somatic health, health behaviour, living style and life events are related to school drop out and work participation in early adulthood. This is important to study so that we can put into action at an early stage in order to avoid that youth fall outside the ordinary working life in early in life. The method we have used has been to connect the data we have from about 12000 young people from large parts of the country that were examined with a series of questions when they went for 10th grade pertaining to, health, friends, family, school and behavior. This we have connected to the data from various databases, such as the education database, SSB and data from NAV about different types of health and social services. We can therefore say something about risk factors to end up outside work life 10 years after high school. One of our main findings is that psychological distress in 15/16 years of age in terms of both anxiety and depression, but especially hyperactivity and behavioral problems are associated with the degree of drop out from high school both for vocational and academic training in secondary school. Same effect we find for smoking and lack of physical activity. Also for the use of social services up to 10 years later we find the same effect, but here it turns out that lifestyle is a stronger factor than mental health. Also somatic disease in the form of muscle/skeleton ailments provides the same danger for both drop-out from school and marginalization in the workplace. It is such that the more health problems the greater is the risk of falling off. The strongest predictor is still subjective health in the 10th grade. When it comes to health behaviors our findings suggest that to go regularly to the family doctor gives less risk to drop out of high school especially for boys. For girls, to seek out school health services gave the same effect. The use of youth health services and mental health care gave greater odds for drop out after 5 years. We also find that to experience negative life events in the form of bullying and violence by the age of 15/16 is a strong predictor of unemployment 8 years later and completed secondary education do attenuate this context. Same effect if not as strong we found for having parents with mental health problems. Again, it is the more serious plagues to the parents is the bigger risk to fall outside the 10 years later. It to experience the support of friends and school seems to be protective factors and prevents dropping out from school and later ejection from working. It was still so that these protective factors in the modest extent moderated the findings we have described above.

Background Marginalisation from work is a burden both to the individual and to society. A considerable proportion of young adults in Norway are marginalised from the labour market. This may in the future represent a large number of years potentially lost to work. Young peoples process of integration into work is considered multifactorial, and may best be studied with a prospective and comprehensive approach. Empirical knowledge about such processes will aid the facilitation of interventions that may enhance integration at an early age. Objective The present study aims to investigate life conditions and school climate during the formative years of adolescence for subsequent marginalisation from work in a long-term perspective. The study will have a special focus on the role of mental health, violence and other life adversities and health/risk behaviour. In interplay with these individual factors, we hypothesize that push and pull-mechanisms at school may have long-term consequences for academic achievement and work ability. Methods A unique opportunity for a prospective investigation of early integration processes is offered by the existence of large youth health surveys combined with high-quality Norwegian registries. The study will link questionnaire data from 1999 - 2004 on 16000 15-year-olds in 400 schools to registry data, and follow each person's work and education process up to the age of 25. Multilevel analyses will be used to identify how individual and school factors interact in the development of marginalisation. Scientific importance The study will address scientific gaps in our knowledge about how living conditions, health and health behavior, and school climate in adolescence affect long-term marginalisation from education and work. The study will add to current knowledge and support policy formulation regarding work integration and adolescents living conditions, which will be useful for decision-makers and relevant for the public debate.