Econometric Analysis of the LFS Micro-Data: Exploring the Risk of Unemployment in Three Southern Greek Regions During the CSF-1

The basic aim of this paper is to test the impact of the educational level of individuals on their job prospects and of training programmes (apprenticeship, intra-firm training, continuing vocational training, popular training) on participants in three Southern Greek Regions (Attica, Southern Aegean and Crete) during the implementation of the first Community Support Framework (1988-1993). Namely, we try to see if the educational level itself and participation in training programmes increase the chances of finding a job. We test the human capital theory, namely whether the more educated and the more trained a person is, the higher the probability of him finding a job. The originality of this research is that we use individual anonymized records (micro-data) of the Labour Force Survey (LFS) for both employed and unemployed (about 53,000 records per year for Attica, 3,300 records per year for Southern Aegean and 6,300 records per year for Crete, namely 1.5% of the total population of each Region). Since the dependent variable takes two possible values (employed versus unemployed) the analysis will be conducted using a logistic regression model. The models were fitted using SPSS version 13.0. The expected value of the dependent variable under the model is a conditional probability of a given individual being employed or unemployed ceteris paribus. The explanatory variables are the (four) types of training completed (as mentioned above), six levels of education, gender, age (four categories), marital status and residence location (Athens, the rest of urban areas, semi-urban areas and rural areas). More specifically, we research what are the social and demographic characteristics that increase the chances of someone in the examined population finding a job, how probabilities change (if they do) after the introduction of training courses and, also, if the University graduates, in contrast to most of the rest of the EU member states, face greater difficulties in finding a job than the non-University graduates, as a series of studies or statistics for Greece conclude. To the author’s knowledge, such a study - based on individual anonymized records of the LFS - has never been undertaken for Attica, Southern Aegean or Crete.