Opportunity youth are young people ages 16 to 24 who are neither working nor enrolled in school. Disconnection from school and work during emerging adulthood can have long-term, negative consequences for the well-being of young people, including lower educational attainment and earnings.[1] Most research examining the consequences of disconnection has focused on young people’s education and employment outcomes, resulting in a limited understanding of how disconnection affects development in other domains, including sexual and reproductive health (SRH). In particular, there are no studies on the SRH outcomes of opportunity youth in the United States based on nationally representative samples.
We addressed the gap in information about the SRH of opportunity youth by conducting an original analysis of data from the 2011-2019 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), the findings from which are presented in this brief.[a] Our analysis focused on:
- The demographic characteristics of opportunity youth[b]
- Factors that can influence both disconnection and SRH for opportunity youth
- SRH behaviors and outcomes of opportunity youth
Suggested citation: Welti, K., Beckwith, S. & Murphy, K. (2022). Understanding the Sexual and Reproductive Health of Opportunity Youth. Bethesda, MD: Child Trends. https://activatecenter.org/resource/understanding-sexual-reproductive-health-opportunity-youth
Footnotes
[a] When weighted, population estimates from the NSFG 2011-2019 are representative of 2015.
[b] For this analysis, we defined opportunity youth as young people, ages 16 to 24, who were not in enrolled in school and not working in the past week. Youth who were not enrolled in school and indicated they were “not working but looking for work,” “keeping house,” “caring for family” and “other” were considered opportunity youth. Those who were on vacation from school or on temporary leave from work due to family leave, vacation, strike, or illness were not considered opportunity youth. Additionally, those who were married with one or more children in the household were not considered opportunity youth.
Reference
[1] Bridgeland, J. M., & Milano, J. A. (2012). Opportunity Road: The Promise and Challenge of America's Forgotten Youth. Civic Enterprises.
Updated in February 2025
Methods
For this brief, we analyzed data from the 2011-2019 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG), a nationally representative survey of civilian, noninstitutionalized men and women of reproductive age (ages 15-49) in the United States. Across the nine years of pooled survey data, 12,843 respondents were ages 16 to 24 and 2,049 of those respondents met our criteria for opportunity youth: not enrolled in school and not working in the past week. This includes young people who were “not working but looking for work,” “keeping house,” “caring for family” and “other.” It did NOT include young people who were on vacation from school or on temporary leave from work due to family leave, vacation, strike, or illness. Additionally, young people who were not enrolled in school or working but were married with one or more children in the household were not considered opportunity youth. Our methodology followed as closely as possible the definition used by the Congressional Research Service (among others).
Analyses were completed in Stata 16.1 and person-level 2011-2019 survey weights were applied to produce nationally representative estimates analogous to the year 2015. A limitation of our analysis is the use of cross-sectional data, which cannot be used to disentangle the likely bidirectional associations between life experiences, opportunity youth status, and SRH outcomes such as pregnancy and parenthood. Future research should explore these factors longitudinally to better understand how they influence one another.
The authors would like to thank the many contributors to this resource. Experts who informed the resource include Karla Vargas, BA, Megan McGuire, MA, and Nia West-Bey, PhD. Thank you also to the several youth-supporting professionals, young people, and other experts who contributed but are not named here. We also thank other Activate project team members who assisted in the development of this resource, including Nia-Simone Woods, research assistant, and Jan DeCoursey, project director. We are grateful for the contributions of other Child Trends and Chapin Hall staff who contributed to this resource. Finally, a special thank you to the Child Trends communications staff, especially Kelley Bennett, Olga Morales, Catherine Nichols, Brent Franklin, and Stephen Russ.