Hungry, unemployed, uneducated and often involved in crime.That is how statistician-general Pali Lehohla summed up the state of South Africa's mainly black youth.He described the situation as "a cocktail of disaster".Revealing the findings of the 2009-2014 profile of youth survey released yesterday, Lehohla said: "It means that we have failed to harness the demographic dividend. We have a youth bulge but that was not translated into human capital. It suggests a very difficult future."Unemployment among those in the 15 to 35 age group increased from 34.2% in 2009 to 35.9% in 2014.Despite notable declines in the percentage of youths living below the poverty line in all provinces - the largest drop, of 17%, was in the Free State - hunger continues to stalk young people.Their exposure to hunger went up from 13.5% in 2010 to 16.2% in 2014, with Northern Cape (up from 19.4% to 29%) and Eastern Cape (up from 18.6% to 24.5%) showing the biggest increases.Of the 5million unemployed people in 2014, 3.4million were young people.Lehohla said that, without education and employment, the young faced a challenging future. Only 38% of youths have matric, 1% have a university degree and 4% have a tertiary qualification other than a degree.This is worsened by the university drop-out rate.Lehohla said that the enrolment rate of black students at universities was increasing, but completion was a challenge.He noted that whites and Indians had made progress in educational achievement, whereas black and coloured youths had regressed.Young people are both the principal victims and perpetrators of crime.In 2012, the highest percentage of youth perpetrators was recorded among those committing robbery (87.5%).Two years later, those committing property theft had the highest percentage of youngsters (85.8%).Between 2012 and 2015, a decline was observed among young assault and robbery perpetrators (4.1% and 5.4% respectively).However, there was an increase of more than 10% in youths guilty of property thefts during the same period."The picture that we end up with is certainly not an easy one for policy-makers as regards youth and as we commemorate the 40 years of the Soweto [student] uprising," he said.The report also reveals that the main causes of death among young males are occurrences such as car crashes and murder, whereas most young females die of infectious and parasitic diseases such as TB, HIV and other viral diseases.In 2008, 34.7% of men died of external causes compared with43.2% in 2013...