YOUTH LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION IN THAI NGUYEN PROVINCE, VIETNAM

Abstract

In many countries, the youth labour force was determined as a main engine in human capital development. This research was conducted to identify the factors that affected the youth labour force participation in Thai Nguyen province, Vietnam by using the database from the Vietnam National Labour Force Survey in 2014, 2015 and 2016, with the employment of the probit model. Our findings indicated that many factors influenced the youth choice to enter the labour force with a high statistical significant level, including individual characteristics (age, gender, living location, educational level) and household demographic feature (household size). Interestingly, the results showed that there was a disparity between sex groups and living area whereby young women were less likely to participate in the labour market than young men (0.66% points) while young people living in rural areas were more likely to join the labour force than young people living in urban areas (about 1.42% points).