The global youth population is 1.2 billion (17.6 percent of the total population), and the regions with the highest shares of young people in their population are Sub-Saharan Africa (20.2 percent), the Arab States (19.6 percent) and South Asia (19.6 percent). Recent social upheavals show that a mismatch between increasingly educated young people and employment opportunities can yield alienation and despair. So they are more likely to be unemployed, underemployed or employed on more precarious contracts.