The Global Youth Development Index (YDI) 2016 was prepared by a Commonwealth Secretariat and measures five distinct domains or key aspects of youth development: Education, Health and Well-being, Employment and Opportunity, Political Participation and Civic Participation. It included 183 countries in total. For the purpose of this Map, we are displaying only the ranking of the country (out of 183 countries in total) in the domain of Political Participation. The lower the ranking (number), the better the situation. This domain measured three indicators: a) whether the country had a youth policy in place; b) existence of voter education in the country; and c) whether young people had expressed political views (answered ‘yes’ to questions ‘Have you done any of the following in the past month?’ and ‘How about voiced your opinion to a public official?’ in a particular study).

You can read more about the YDI, the methodology and full rankings and scoring of all countries in all categories here.

The Youth Progress Index is one of the first ever concepts for measuring the quality of life of young people independently of economic indicators. The framework is structured around 3 dimensions, 12 components and 60 distinct indicators. The Dimensions (Basic Human Needs, Foundations of Wellbeing and Opportunity) represent the broad conceptual categories that define social progress, and Components are unique but related concepts that together make up each dimension. The Youth Progress Index ranks 102 countries fully, and a further 52 countries partially. In the context of this map, the overall ranking of each country (out of 102) is displayed.
You can read more about the YPI, the methodology and full rankings and scoring of all countries here.

The Map presents the minimum legal voting ages and the minimum legal candidacy ages for national and European Parliament elections by country. For Erasmus+ programme and partner countries who are not members of the European Union (and therefore do not have seats in the European Parliament), only the data about minimum voting and candidacy ages on national level are displayed. In the case of countries that have bicameral parliaments (e.g. parliament consists of an upper and a lower house), the voting and candidacy age data refers to the lower house only, as the voting/candidacy ages are always either lower or the same in case of a lower house compared to the upper house of parliament, but never higher.

Data source for voting and candidacy ages on national levels (Inter-Parliamentary Union).
Data source for voting and candidacy ages for European Parliament elections (European Commission).

‘Legislated’ in the context of this Map refers to the mentioning of youth participatory structures or process within a legislative act – this is usually an act of parliament, or by-law, e.g. minister’s decree. Youth participation processes refer to either structures (such as youth councils, student councils, youth organisations, youth parliaments etc) or processes more broadly, e.g. consultation mechanisms with young people, participatory budgeting, youth check/youth mainstreaming which means that the impacts of bills on young people need to be considered and analysed before a bill can become a law). The purpose of this indicator is to identify which countries and on which levels have legislated (mentioned/guaranteed rights in the law) any youth participation-related processes or structures.

Note: This data is submitted by the National Agencies of Erasmus+ programme countries and is therefore not available about neighbouring partner countries. Some countries do not have a regional/state/province/country administrative level.

This indicator provides a brief overview about any relevant developments regarding youth participation in a policy or legislation context that are currently being debated or have been recently agreed upon at a national/country level, as identified by the National Agencies of Erasmus+/European Solidarity Corps programmes.

Note: This data is submitted by the National Agencies of Erasmus+ programme countries and is therefore not available about neighbouring partner countries yet.