To What Extent does it Pay to be Better Educated? Education and the Work Market for Women in Italy

Abstract

Italian women are doing progressively better than men in terms of educational attainment. While, however, this has not fully materialized as overall employment gains for women, it is contributing to the enhancement of differences among them. Female participation is low mainly because poorly educated women are disproportionately excluded from the (official) labour market. Also, female unemployment remains high and the puzzling association between rising educational attainment and rising unemployment reflects a contradiction between strong incentives to invest in education at the microlevel and the possibility that more education swells the ranks of the unemployed at the macrolevel. We can make sense of this seeming contradiction only if we recognize the different roles that education performs in different institutional contexts, over and above that of augmenting human capital