Trajectories of NEET in individuals formerly placed in out‐of‐home care: A Swedish national cohort study

Abstract

It is widely acknowledged that individuals with out‐of‐home care (OHC) experiences, including foster‐family care and residential care, face an increased risk of poor labour market attachment during emerging adulthood. However, limited understanding exists regarding how this attachment, conceptualized here as ‘not in employment, education, or training’ (NEET), evolves beyond young adulthood and the degree to which this development is marked by persistence or desistance. Using group‐based trajectory modelling and multinomial regression on population‐based register data for over 650,000 Swedish men and women (including approximately 14,000 with OHC experience), followed from birth to age 40, the results indicate that OHC‐experienced individuals, especially those first placed as teenagers, exhibit a substantially higher risk of persistent NEET compared to peers without OHC experience. Nevertheless, the majority of OHC‐experienced individuals followed pathways characterized by desistance. Implications for research, policy and practice are discussed.