Youth facing financial and mental health challenges
16 July 2024 Read the paper
Young Victorians have been particularly affected by the rise in the cost of living, with lower incomes, less secure employment and lower home ownership rates all resulting in their greater vulnerability, a new paper from the Parliamentary Library has found.
The paper, Young People in Victoria, provides a snapshot of Victorians aged 18 to 30 and surveys a range of recent research around physical and mental health, education and work, cost of living and engagement with politics and policy.
The paper outlines young people’s demographic and geographic distribution, their participation in work and education, their family and heritage, their health issues, gender and sexuality and involvement in the criminal justice system.
The paper finds that while young Victorians have better overall health than the adult population, they have become far more susceptible to mental health risks.
The paper references the annual Australian Youth Barometer from Monash University, which reports that ‘26 per cent of young Australians rate their mental health as poor or very poor … and that 24 per cent of young Australians received mental health care in the past 12 months, while 13 per cent sought but did not receive such care’.
The paper also finds younger populations across Australia are more likely to identify as LGBTIQA+ or gender diverse. Only 79.4 per cent of all youth identified as ‘heterosexual or straight’, compared to 94.7 per cent across all age groups in the 2022 Australian Election Study.
Younger people are likelier to have more negative views on parliaments and elections. However, they are engaged with politics and public policy in their own ways.
Young people’s engagement focuses less on electoral processes and traditional institutions such as political parties. Rather, they tend to focus on activities like signing petitions, protesting, or boycotting consumer goods.
The paper outlines some of the institutional efforts to develop innovative youth enagagement strategies, including that of the Parliament of Victoria, which has developed an extensive youth engagement program.
For more details download the full paper.