Youth unemployment and political instability: evidence from IGAD member countries

Abstract

Evidence show that IGAD member countries are the most political unstable countries in the world. On the other hand, literatures on the subject reveal that youth unemployment contributes the most towards the political instability across the world. Nonetheless, investigation on the effect of youth unemployment on political instability particularly in IGAD member countries is very scanty. Thus, the objective of the current study is to investigate the effect of youth unemployment on political instability in IGAD member countries. For this purpose, the necessary secondary data is collected from ICRG, WDI and ILO on five selected IGAD member countries. To find out the effect of youth unemployment on political instability; fixed effect model, instrumental variable fixed effect model and one step system GMM estimation on dynamic panel data have been employed. The analysis result revealed that there is a significant effect of youth unemployment on political instability in IGAD member countries. This region specifically needs a sound youth employment policy not only for the sake of youths but also for the relief of government reducing the burden of controlling continuous internal instabilities. Moreover, in region-wise the IGAD countries better to have common youth employment creation policies so that they can manage the internal conflicts arises here and then.