Family Origin and Early School Leaving in Italy: The Long-Term Effects of Internal Migration

The proportion of early school leavers in Italy is high by European Union standards. However, it is not uniformly distributed across the country: in Southern regions, it is almost double than in Centre-Northern area. This chapter goes beyond descriptive evidence and examines the conditional probability of leaving school with (at most) the compulsory schooling certificate in Italy using seven waves of Bank of Italy’s SHIW data, covering individuals born in the period from 1979 to 1995. Among various determinants, we focus on the role played by family origin. Our results show that youths born in the Centre-North with both parents from Southern Italy (second generation internal migrants) behave similarly to youths born and living in the South, so that they are more likely to drop out school earlier than comparable individuals born in the Centre-North with parents from the same area (natives). When only the household head is from the South, second generation migrants are similar to natives and the assimilation with native born in terms of schooling choices at the age of 14 is complete. Differences in family characteristics (education, financial conditions) are able to account for a large share of raw differences in education decisions between individuals born in Centre-North vs. South, as well as between natives and second generation migrants born in the Centre-North of Italy. The analysis of these dynamics over time shows that differences across groups of youths defined by their origin narrow since the mid-2000.