The proportion of youth that is not inwork or in school or ninis1 in Latin America and theCaribbean (LAC) remains high. The latest estimates show thatabout 19 per cent of 15-24 years olds in the region, were inthis status in 2010 (de Hoyos, Rogers and Popova (2013).This status entails a series of negative implications forthe life-cycle development of the youth involved with abreak in the human capital accumulation process thattranslates into a reduction in future productivity and labormarket outcomes. A large share of ninis might also entailrisks for society at large through potential short-termeffects such as crime rates, and through the long-termsequels from not fully capitalizing on the ‘demographicwindow of opportunity’ of historically low economicdependency ratios, among others. The objective of this paperis to develop a conceptual framework for laying out the mainelements involved in the dynamics of choices andrestrictions faced by youth in the 15-24 age range. Thepaper also discusses different approaches that could be usedto test the empirical validity of the theoreticalimplications presented here. The paper includes foursections. Section two starts with a simple characterizationof the life-cycle transition of time uses for youth in LAC.Section three introduces a more formal presentation of whatunderlies these processes and what impact they may have.Section four addresses the considerations for empiricalanalyses and policy discussion. The last section includessome final remarks.
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