Abstract
ABSTRACT At a time of growing expectations about educational attainment, young people who did not complete upper-secondary schooling can easily be ‘left behind’ to face risks of social exclusion. Being able to make a rapid and successful transition into a first significant job is crucial for long-term labor-market attachment. We approach the question of continuity or change in school-to-work transitions by comparing the experiences of four birth cohorts of early school leavers in Italy, where they still constitute a sizeable group as of today. Italy makes for an interesting case study due to the length of school-to-work transitions and the extent of gender differences in this phase. In an era of educational expansion and increased female activation, studying changes in low-educated women’s labor-market access brings into focus the question of who is really left behind. Using data from the 2009 ‘Multi-purpose Survey on Household and Social Subjects,’ we use discrete time logistic regression models to estimate the probability of transitioning to the first significant job for early school leavers born between 1954 and 1993. We find that gender differences are strikingly persistent across birth cohorts, even after controlling for sociodemographic variables as well as for time-varying fertility and partnership histories.
Highlights
At a time of growing expectations about educational attainment, young people who fail to meet minimal standards can be ‘left behind’ to face risks of social exclusion (Furlong et al 2012)
Transition to first job The Kaplan-Maier survival curves displayed in Figure 3 show that gender differences are already evident from the start: One year after leaving the educational system, the male
By comparing the experiences of four birth cohorts in Italy, we examined the timing and quality of school-to-work transitions among this vulnerable group of youth
Summary
At a time of growing expectations about educational attainment, young people who fail to meet minimal standards can be ‘left behind’ to face risks of social exclusion (Furlong et al 2012). The extent to which transformations in youth transitions represent a radical change with respect to past cohorts’ experiences or are in fundamental continuity with them is a subject of long-lasting debate (du Bois-Reymond 2009; Goodwin and O’Connor 2009; MacDonald 2011) Recent studies indicate that elements of nonlinearity and complexity are increasingly apparent in the trajectories of youths who approached labor-market entry after the deregulation reforms, especially in those of women (Struffolino and Raitano 2018) and low-educated individuals (Brzinsky-Fay and Solga 2016). By comparing the experiences of four birth cohorts of early school leavers in Italy, we investigate the timing and quality of school-to-work transitions among this vulnerable group over a period of forty years (1969–2009) In this period, the Italian labor market underwent important supply-side transformations (namely in terms of educational expansion and increasing female activation) as well as deregulation reforms, especially after the early 1990s.
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