Youth face various choices regarding their activity status, such as early entry into the labour force, pursuing further education or being Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET), as well as early marriage for women. This study analyses the role of social networks and their gender differential on these three activity status choices of Indian youth (15–29 years) in 2011 to 2012 using IHDS-II data. The study uses two types of social network variables: (a) the number of ties with any or all persons in a medical profession, teacher and government servant, and is similar to the degree centrality measure in the social network literature, and (b) the nature of ties, which measures the intensity of connection with these people categorised them as strong, arising from same family or caste, weak or none. Estimates from the multinomial logit model show that having more ties increases the odds of choosing education over an early entry into the labour force. On the nature of ties, we find that having access to strong ties increases the odds of being either in education or NEET over an early entry into the labour force for males. For females, strong ties favour education or NEET over employment, while other types of ties favour employment and reduce their odds of being either in education or in NEET. The information on social network types available in the data set is limited, in particular the absence of peer networks, to carry out a richer analysis. Nevertheless, this study contributes both towards the social network literature and assessing the determinants of youth activity status for the first time in India.
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