Экономические науки/ 15.Государственное регулирование экономики

Логунова Ю.А.

Самарский государственный экономический университет, Россия

Comparative Analysis of Young Adults’ Problems: Diachronic Approach

Young adults of all time have faced different and, sometimes, challenging problems. However, the difficulties that twenty-somethings of the 19th or the 20th centuries encountered are only to some point similar to those of our time. It should be considered if the fact that the youngsters of our era still have to rise to the challenges of our ancestors is a good sign or not (Martynova, Glukhov, 2015). Although it seems to be an intriguing theme to discuss, the objective of this essay is to compare and contrast the problems of Post-Millennials and those of their parents. The criteria I'm going to speculate about include access to education, labour market, and political participation.

Accessible education was the main social policy of the government 20-30 years ago. Everyone attended schools and everyone was able to get higher education at universities for free. Nowadays, the situation has drastically changed – while the cost of education is rising every year, the government is reducing the number of governmentally funded places. Getting at least a bachelor's degree is becoming a more daunting challenge for pupils to take up. Moreover, the laws, adopted by the Russian Ministry of Education, convince me that it has recently made school boys and girls its main enemies. Although new amends are claimed to improve the level of Russian education, Russian diplomas are not acceptable abroad. In addition, the majority of international student competitions are nowadays usually won by the students from Asian countries or the USA, what also worsens the overall situation.

Employment is another problem for young people. Where Generation X (born between the 1960s and the 1980s) had a guaranteed employment after finishing the university, its kids encounter low levels of job security and stability. Youth unemployment is a contemporary social problem in many societies (see Hällsten et al., 2016 and Tolgensbakk e al., 2017 for details). Firstly, the current economic climate makes employers unable to make a lot of new appointments. Secondly, the majority of recent graduates faces a serious problem of finding work according to their major. The situation worsens due to companies’ rejection to employ inexperienced candidates. In addition, nepotism is still common in Russia and, therefore, makes entering the labour market even tougher for young adults. However, there is one thing that offers a glimmer of hope. It is the entrepreneurship. It was strictly forbidden in the USSR, whereas nowadays the government tries to encourage the small business in Russia. Thus, if one does not succeed in getting a job, there’s a good possibility of starting own business. However, its prospects are quite a different story (Llisterri et al., 2006).

The last point I want to address concerns changes in political participation. Policy and economy (and to some extent even culture) were inaccessible for our parents. What’s more, they could not freely express their opinions or discuss and evaluate the governmental actions. Although such forms of the pastime as Comsomol were common, the membership there was more obliged than voluntarily. Nowadays, young adults are able to take part in different political organisations and even the chance of entering the State Duma. Unfortunately, some people are simply not interested in politics and thus become the easy victims of manipulation. In addition, it seems to me that history is circling back as the government is currently restricting online freedom and there are already some cases of applied criminal sanctions for ‘the Internet crimes’.

Summing up all the above said, some aspects, which are important for the young people, have improved throughout the years and some still require sweeping changes. In my opinion, nowadays we face a daunting challenge of preventing the history repeating itself. Our future and the future of our offspring depend on the actions taken by us now.

Литература:

1. Hällsten, M., Edling, C., Rydgren, J., Social capital, friendship networks, and youth unemployment, Social Science Research – 2016

2. Llisterri J.J., Kantis H., Angelelli P., Tejerina L. Is Youth Entrepreneurship a Necessity or an Opportunity? -2006

3. Martynova I.A., Glukhov G.V. Exploring the echoes of social changes: case study of language infantilism // Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences.- 2015. Т. 6. № 6 S3. С. 315-322.

4. Tolgensbakk I., Janikke Solstad Vedeler J.S., Hvinden B., Youth unemployment and the consequences for life satisfaction and social trust in seven European countries – 2017