An Investigation in Role of Youth Development Index and its Main Component Effective on GDP Growth in Selected Counties; Lessons for Iran

More than half of the world’s population consists of youth and adolescents under25 years of age. Some 1.2 billion of them are 15-24 years old, and predictions suggest this number will rise for the next 20 years. As a considerable part of the population in any country that can play a positive or a negative role in the development of their countries, the youth have diversified needs such as education, employment, access to healthcare and sanitation facilities, and the possibility of engaging in social and civil society activities. Calculating the youth development index in various countries is among the activities that have taken place to determine the degree of youth atmosphere development. This index was calculated for 171 countries with respect to the five key axes of education, health and well-being, employment, political participation, and citizen participation. The main hypothesis in the present research is that the youth development index and the main components of this index have positive effects on economic growth of countries. To investigate this issue, an econometric model based on the endogenous growth model is employed and the selected countries through developed, developing, and less developed countries are studied. Results indicated that, YDI plays effective and significant role in the economic growth. Also all off its main components have effective and significant roles in the economic growth of the selected countries.