An atlas of educational inequality in Italy: outcomes, disparities and opportunities

We present an in-depth analysis of educational inequality in Italy, focusing on disparities in educational outcomes and opportunities across different socio-economic, gender, and migration backgrounds. Leveraging administrative longitudinal data, we construct a dataset of 386 small geographical areas with a sufficient sample size to assess the extent to which key ascriptive characteristics predict the mathematical achievement of Italian students in the 5th grade of primary school. Our findings highlight a substantial influence of ascriptive characteristics on students’ educational attainment, able to correctly predict out-of-sample up to 20% of the variability despite the relatively small sample size. We show significant geographical variation that previous studies, based on larger geographical aggregations, were unable to observe comprehensively. Additionally, we identify a weak yet negative trade-off between equality and average attainment, which is more pronounced in southern areas, where higher achievement is associated with greater variance and a stronger influence of ascriptive characteristics. Among the predictors, we find that mother’s education plays a predominant role in most of the country.