Brasília, 3/17/2004 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - A new United Nations index, similar to the Human Development Index, but for young people, called the Youth Development Index (YDI), has just been released with data on Brazilian youth. The new index is part of a larger report by Unesco on young people between the ages of 15 and 24 in Brazil. The index compares data on education, health and income and uses them to classify living standards.

The Unesco report and the new index will have a role in Brazilian government policy. "We can use them to see what is working and what is not working," explains Julio Jacobo, who coordinated the report and heads the Unesco office in Pernambuco.

The pioneer survey, the first of its kind in the world, shows that a youth's future pretty much depends on where he lives. It shows that as far as Brazilian youth are concerned, it is better to live in the South than in the North. The areas with the highest YDIs are in Santa Catarina and the Federal District (Brasilia). At 0.673 and 0.652, respectively, their YDIs are almost double the lowest, in the states of Pernambuco (0.361) and Alagoas (0.337).

The study also found that there are 7 million unemployed youths in Brazil, around 20% of the total between the ages of 15 and 24. It showed that average illiteracy is low, only 4.2%, but unequal: it varies from 6.4% for Blacks, to 2% for whites. The study found that only 29.2% of the age group surveyed was in school.

Finally, average income for the age group was slighly less than one and a half minimum wages (that works out to around R$360 per month). As for the mortality rate, it has risen to 133 per 100,000. (AB)