Emerging policy lessons from research on youth attitudes and values

Drawing on some of the research findings from the project, we identified four key areas to inform policy debates.Generational differences: A mythFirst, the generational differences in relation to work attitudes often referred to in public debates and in political discourses are myths. ‘Millennials' are not ‘procrastinating'; their attitude to work cannot explain youth unemployment today. Young people today give as much importance to work as other generations at the same age. The value of work differs for everyone throughout the life cycle. Therefore, EU or national policies should not fail because of generation-specific cultural deviations. In other words, if we accept the findings of the literature that work values have a significant impact on values in general, then the stable nature of work values generation by generation provides policy-makers with firm ground to act. However, we detected differences in work values by age and period, as well as between two groups of European countries, so we should be aware that generational stability does not mean full-scale similarity. The high level of commitment to employment in the youngest cohorts suggests that employment-generating policies can be important for helping the young enter into the labour market.