8 > Next Generation Myanmar C H A P T ER 1: YO U T H I N M YA N M A R : CURRENT RESEARCH AND REMAINING QUESTIONS Research into Myanmar’s development has greatly expanded with the country’s gradual liberalisation. Numerous institutions, both foreign and domestic, public and private, have commissioned studies into a wide range of policy areas. Few of these, however, have explicitly focused on youth opinion. Youth account for roughly a third of Myanmar’s population.4 This demographic, defined in this study as young people aged 18 to 30, is of critical importance to the development of their country. Not only will youth assume positions of leadership, many are already politically active, finding ways to participate through civil society organisations (CSOs), ethnic interest groups and the youth wings of political parties. They are also the first generation to begin work within Myanmar’s slowly reforming economy, and the first to do so with modern communications technology. Their attitudes and aspirations will steer the country’s transition for decades to come, underscoring the importance of youth opinion research. The limited amount of such research limits effective policy. No national-scale research of youth opinion, stratified by essential demographics like geography, gender and education, has yet been available to policymakers. Government programmes and foreign-assisted development initiatives have had limited guidance on youth values and interests – a serious limitation for programmes affecting youth. Researchers are aware of this problem. ‘The absence of data about [the situations and aspirations of] youth in Myanmar is striking to many participants 4 5 6 7 8 > > > > > in this research – including the staff of international aid agencies as well as government ministries,’ write Lopes Cardozo, et. al in their 2016 study of education and peacebuilding. ‘This consequently has repercussions on effective policymaking tailored to the specific needs and concerns of youth across the country’. The Next Generation Myanmar study begins to address this absence. Grounded in a thorough review of existing literature, Next Generation Myanmar combines quantitative and qualitative research methods to overcome limitations found in previous studies. Its survey of youth across the country explores youth opinion on a number of topics, while focus group discussions and key informant interviews add qualitative depth to the survey’s findings. Each method contributes to the central question asked by Myanmar’s demography, but only partially understood by existing literature: what do youth across Myanmar think? Literature review Existing research in Myanmar does not ignore youth. Many studies account for the effect of given policies on the lives of young people, while others describe the role youth play in particular policy areas. Most of these studies focus on policy areas that directly affect youth well-being. See Government of Myanmar (2017b: 13), Figure 1.2. United Nations Population Fund. See Track20 (2018). See also Government of Myanmar (2016). See Thu (2015), Han (2016) and Internationale Projekt Consult (2015). Reports on healthcare in Myanmar, for example, provide detailed information on the health outcomes of youth. Policy papers jointly prepared by the government of Myanmar and the UNFPA5 (2013a, 2013b, 2017) provide a range of youth health statistics, citing trends in youth behaviour to support their policy recommendations. Some publications rely on external data to estimate healthcare needs,6 though the government of Myanmar has also conducted its own surveys to collect healthcare data. The Demographic and Health Survey 2015–16 (Ministry of Health and Sports and ICF, 2017),7 for example, reported health indicators specific to youth behaviour, such as school attendance rates and age of first marriage. Similar research efforts explore youth trends in education and employment outcomes. A 2016 study from the Asia Development Bank examined private tutoring fees and matriculation rates, alongside student perceptions, to propose reforms in education policy (Spohr, 2016). Policy documents from the Ministry of Education cite enrolment and achievement figures by age group (Government of Myanmar, 2014). Newspapers often report on youth employment, particularly in Yangon, while commissioned studies have examined the financial resources available to youth.8 Like their equivalent