Parental background and College drop out. Evidence from Italy

Human capital accumulation is widely recognised as a crucial factor for economic and social policies in modern societies. Individual returns on schooling have been proved positive for most countries, both in terms of steeper age-earnings profiles and improved employment probability. In Italy, although higher educational qualifications give more opportunity in the labour market, university drop out rate is high. In the Italian case college drop out rate particularly deserves attention for two reasons: it is the highest among OECD countries and has been persistent over the last thirty years. In this paper the determinants of students ’ propensity to drop out of university are analysed using the Italian component of the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). The data set includes many variables related the family background, such as the educational qualifications of parents, marital status, family size but it does not contain any information about students abilities and faculties. The aim of this paper is evaluate the probability of being enrolled in university, of drop out and getting a degree, given a specific parental background. In this work I investigate the drop out phenomenon stressing the importance of parents ’ characteristics in order to observe if th