Poverty, Unemployment, and the Mental Health of Young Indians: Causal Pathways, Long-Term Consequences, and Mitigation Strategies — A Review

Abstract

India is home to more than 253 million adolescents, close to a fifth of the world's adolescent population, and to a labour market that absorbs comparatively few of them. Young people account for roughly 83% of the country's unemployed, and the educated share of that group has risen substantially since 2000. This narrative review examines what that economic position does to mental health among Indians aged 10 to 24, and argues that the Indian pattern differs from the global one in a specific respect. International evidence explains the poverty–mental health association mainly through absolute deprivation and chronic stress. Indian evidence supports those mechanisms but points toward a further pathway that appears more consequential here: the gap between educational attainment and labour market absorption. Reported prevalence of depressive symptoms among economically disadvantaged Indian youth spans roughly 20% to 55% across the studies examined, against a national adolescent morbidity estimate of 7.3%. Four pathways are examined — household financial stress transmitted through family process, material insecurity, blocked educational mobility, and stigma linked to caste, tribal status, and gender. On mitigation, school-based interventions delivered by lay counsellors show the most consistent Indian evidence, whereas cash transfer effects on youth mental health are small and inconsistent internationally and have never been evaluated on Indian youth. India's mitigation evidence is concentrated where young people are easiest to reach, and is largely absent where economic risk is greatest.