Youth culture is an inevitable product of an affluent society, and not an import from the West. In very poor societies, there is no opportunity for the emergence of adolescence as we know it. Children who cannot afford formal schooling are compelled to work as child labourers. At an early age they are thrown into the world of work, carrying bricks, selling sweets on the streets or sweating in factories. They assume adult roles and responsibilities and enter into an adult world.
Youth culture is a characteristic of industrialised society.
However, in reality youth culture is differentiated by social class, ethnicity, and gender. Because of the limited scope of this article, I will just skim through social class differences. Unemployment generates a vacuum of leisure time, which is an important condition for the proliferation of working class youth subcultures. In England, the Mods and the Teds in the 1950s, the Rockers in the 1960s, Punks and Skinheads in the 1970s and 1980s were mostly working-class kids, and each subculture was associated with a particular type of music. Many working-class kids work, but they do not get meaningful and secure jobs, they are paid less than adults, and they are pushed around by adults in the workplaces.