Exercise: the mobility ladder (II): a young person from a low-income home in Spain, from 16 to 30

Yesterday we followed a girl born in 2026 into a low-income household in Spain from her first day to her sixteenth birthday, and designed every rung she meets with the five-column test: Goal | Who decides? | Who implements? | Who can veto? | How do we know it worked? Today she turns 16 and we take her to 30. In part one the danger was falling behind at school. From 16 the dangers change: leaving to earn, choosing a route blind, a first job that leads nowhere, and a home she can't afford to leave for.

Rung four: staying on at 16

At 16 her family's budget starts to pull her out of school. The answer is the earnings-replacement grant we proposed on day 24: paid weekly during the course, conditioned on attendance, tapered with income, with part saved and released when she finishes. She chooses bachillerato or vocational training (FP), and the choice stays open in both directions.

• Goal: fewer low-income students leaving at 16, with completion rates rising.
• Who decides? The state sets the grant; regions add to it.
• Who implements? The ministry's grants service, with schools confirming attendance.
• Who can veto? The finance ministry, on cost, so the grant is piloted in a few provinces with a comparison group before it scales.
• How do we know? Enrolment and completion at 18 by family income, compared with the pilot provinces.

Rung five: university or higher FP at 18

At 18 she needs two things: information about where each route leads, and money to follow it. Today's analysis of degrees and jobs shows how much the field matters, and that the ministry already has the employment record for every degree. That data goes on every admission page.

The money exists and needs to reach her on time. According to the government, the 2026-27 grants budget is €2,559 million, up by more than €1,000 million since 2018, and about a million students receive a grant. The fixed amounts are €1,700 linked to income and €2,700 for students living away from home. On day 22 we set these amounts against the cost of studying away from home, and day 27 explained why grants arrive months late. Her rung is a grant sized to the real cost of her city, confirmed before she enrols on the strength of the tax data the state already holds, and paid from the first month.

At 18 she also receives the starting stake opened for her at birth, an idea from Halstead and Lind's The Radical Center. For a student from a poor family, a small capital sum is the deposit on a room or the months of rent that make a degree in another city possible.

• Goal: the share of low-income students starting and finishing higher education rises every year.
• Who decides? The state, for the grant; universities and regions, for places and fees.
• Who implements? The grants service, with universities.
• Who can veto? Universities that resist publishing their graduates' outcomes, so publication is a condition of public funding.
• How do we know? Entry and completion by income, and grant payment dates, published every year.

Rung six: the first job

Here Spain's ladder has its worst gap. Eurostat puts the under-25 unemployment rate at 22.8% in September 2026, against 15.5% in the EU. SEPE's 2026 youth report finds youth temporary work lower than before the 2021 labour reform. Even so, 59.26% of the contracts signed by young people in 2025 were temporary, and the report calls youth temporary work structural.

Spain's main tool is the Youth Guarantee. The OECD's mid-term evaluation of Youth Guarantee Plus, published by SEPE in December 2025, covered 541,533 registered young people. One in three participants did not know they had been in the programme. For vulnerable young people, receiving at least one service was associated with a 27-point higher chance of being hired, and job offers did most of the work, while guidance on its own showed no significant effect. The report calls this a preliminary analysis, and it points somewhere clear: put the money into real job offers, paid placements and training linked to employers, which is also what dual FP does.

Her rung is a guaranteed offer within four months of leaving education or losing a job, a paid placement or a job with training, plus the open, advertised hiring we argued for in getting on through effort, so that contacts she doesn't have stop deciding where she starts.

• Goal: cut youth unemployment towards the EU average and halve the time from leaving education to a first stable job.
• Who decides? The state and the regions, which run active labour market policy.
• Who implements? Public employment services, with employers and training centres.
• Who can veto? Regions that run their own programmes, so funding follows results and data are shared.
• How do we know? Job entry and contribution days at 6 and 12 months for each service, with random assignment wherever places are limited.

Rung seven: a first home

The last rung is the one that decides whether she can start her own life. Eurostat reports that young Spaniards left the parental home at 30.2 on average in 2025, the same as Italy, against 26.3 in the EU. The new state housing plan, Real Decreto 326/2026, gives under-35s with incomes up to five times the IPREM up to €300 a month for a flat or €200 for a room, at most 60% of the rent, for two years that can be extended by two more.

Aid on its own pushes against a fixed number of flats. Her rung is the programme from our week 3 answer: many more homes where the jobs are, a public guarantee for landlords who sign long leases, and Democracia 21's target of €350 out of €1,300 as the measure every housing policy answers to.

• Goal: bring the age of leaving home down towards the EU average.
• Who decides? The state, regions and metropolitan areas.
• Who implements? Regions for the aid; councils and builders for the homes.
• Who can veto? Councils that block building, so permits become legal by right.
• How do we know? Age of leaving home, rent as a share of young wages and homes completed, every year.

The joins, again

From 16 to 30 the joins are even weaker than in childhood. School, university, the employment service and the housing office each hold a piece of her file and none of them sees the whole. So the one piece that belongs to no camp carries on: she keeps one contact, a named adviser in the public employment service from 16 to 30, who sees when a grant is late, a course is dropped or a job ends, and acts within weeks. The left gets automatic grants and aid. The market-liberal tradition gets work that pays, more homes and programmes kept only when results move. Sen's question stays on top of it all: at 30, is she free to live the life she has reason to value? That is the test this whole ladder answers to, and our week 4 answer turns it into a programme.