Not participating in education, employment or training (NEET): Hope to mitigate new social risks in the UK?

Young people not participating in education, employment or training (NEET) are a key policy concern in Europe. We examine whether hope, as a form of life course agency, plays a protective role against the risk of being NEET in the context of the British welfare state. Hope is conceptualised as multidimensional: being a temporally embedded, agentic mentality comprised of one’s sense of adaptive decision-making in the present and pathways thinking towards the future. Longitudinal estimations based on the latest Understanding Society microdata (2009-2018) indicate a direct association between higher-hope modes, on average, and a lower likelihood of being NEET. Further, our study assesses whether hopeful agency is moderated by the experience of parental worklessness. Findings indicate that while hope is not more important for those who experienced disadvantages in upbringing, hopeful agency is shown to be equally important in the face of past and present NEET risks. For the UK, building young peoples’ adaptive, agentic mentality towards their future in education or employment over the long-term, may prove one cost-effective policy approach.