Three countries have kept the gap small. All three teach young people at work

Of 63 high income countries, the five with the smallest gap between their young and their adults are, in order: Japan at 1.59, Israel at 1.73, Germany at 1.85, Switzerland at 1.86 and Austria at 1.97.

Germany, Switzerland and Austria are the three countries most often named as running a dual apprenticeship system, where a young person is an employee and a student at the same time and the employer carries real training obligations. They hold three of the five lowest places. Their median is 1.86, against 2.83 for the other 57.

That result survived a considerable widening. It was first noticed in a set of nine countries, where three points sitting together proves close to nothing. Extending to 63 could easily have dissolved it. It did not.

The control that makes it interesting. If the finding were really that northern European social democracies do this better, the neighbours would follow. They do not. Denmark is at 2.12, the Netherlands 2.28 and Norway 2.89, all unremarkable, with Norway close to Britain. Whatever is happening is specific to those three countries, not general to the region or to the welfare model.

What it is not. It is three observations, and three observations cannot carry a causal claim however well they line up. This report does not make one. Germany, Switzerland and Austria differ from Britain in many ways beyond their training systems: labour market regulation, the shape of their manufacturing, how their firms are financed, how long people stay in one job.

The two countries below them are the useful check. Japan and Israel have no dual system. Japan does have something that works similarly: a nationally synchronised, institutionalised route from education into employment. If the mechanism were apprenticeship specifically, Japan should not be there. If the mechanism is any reliable, built route from school into paid work, Japan is exactly where you would expect it.

That is the more careful version of the claim, and it is the one the data supports. Not that apprenticeships fix this. Something closer to: countries with a designed transition from education into a job have smaller youth penalties, and the transition can be designed more than one way.

Britain's relevance is direct. The thing every country at the bottom of this table shares is a designed transition. The question that follows is not whether Britain should copy Germany. It is whether Britain has a designed transition at all.