Increasingly more young Ukrainians remind their peer Americans in terms of being obese, career-oriented, single and glued to the TV couch potatoes. These suggestions can be drawn from a research conducted by the M.V. Ptukhi Kyiv Institute of Demographic and Social Studies. Thousands of young Ukrainians were polled within the framework of the project “Demographic Aspects of Youth Policy in Ukraine” funded by the UN Population Fund in Ukraine.
By the age of 30-34 more than a third of Ukrainians suffer from excess weight or obesity. This problem is more often than not due to an unhealthy lifestyle and lack of exercise. Two out of five surveyed do not engage in sports purely out of principle and approximately the same number of people exercise on an irregular basis and 18% of the surveyed (more men than women) do not allow themselves to turn into “couch potatoes”.
Drug addiction, smoking and drinking are other scourges of the nation’s future. The death rate from alcoholic poisoning among the Ukrainian youth is 16 times higher than in Europe. The situation with smoking is no better. A third of Ukrainian mothers accustom their infants in the womb to cigarette smoke: every fourth pregnant woman lives in a home of smokers and 6% are smokers, the poll found.
Only 7% of college students hope for the assistance of a university or the state. Due to the disequilibrium of the education and labor markets graduates of universities and colleges have a hard time finding gainful employment. around 40% of young Ukrainians have no intentions of giving up their comfortable office chair for the freedom of freelancing. And only every tenth respondent is either running his or her own business or is planning to open one.
Another important process is the migratory activity of the population. According to the results of research, youth constitutes two thirds of migratory flows and a fairly large number of young Ukrainians are ready to go work abroad. around 40% of young Ukrainians have no intentions of giving up their comfortable office chair for the freedom of freelancing. And only every tenth respondent is either running his or her own business or is planning to open one.
