Out-of-School Youth                      

The proportion of youth population 7-24 years old who were out of school and those who were unemployed and have not graduated from college increased by 852 thousand, from 3.0 million in 1989 to 3.8 million in 1994. See Tables D1 and D2. Like the data on youth enrollment, the outcome of OSYs could have also been affected by some seasonalities brought about by the differences in the months the two surveys were conducted. Another possible factor was the onset of the harvest season.

In 1994, the highest proportion of OSY was observed in Western Mindanao (18.7 per-cent), followed by ARMM (17.5 percent) and Central Visayas (17.4 percent). Except for CAR’s impres-sive record of 7.3 percent, the rest of the regions reported OSY propor-tions ranging from 11.6 percent (Ilocos) to 16.3 percent (Northern Mindanao).

In 1994, about 17.6 percent of the 7-24 years old females were out of school. This figure was 6.7 percentage points higher than the 10.9 percent registered by their male counterparts. A 2.1 and 1.2 percentage point increase was observed in the male and female proportions, respectively, from their 1989 levels. Refer to Table D1.

In 1989, OSYs in rural areas (12.9 percent) edged up their urban counterparts (11.8 percent) by 1.1 percentage points. This gap went down to 0.6 percentage point in 1994 after the proportion in urban areas rose by 2.0 percentage points to 13.8 percent while the rural incremented by 1.5 percentage points to 14.4 percent.