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Parental education and family characteristics: educational opportunities across cohorts in Italy and Spain

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  • Antonio Di Paolo

    (Departament d'Economia Aplicada, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Campus de Bellaterra, Edifici B 08193 Bellaterra (Cerdanyola), Spain. Institut d’Economia de Barcelona (IEB), Universitat de Barcelona)

Abstract

Drawing on data contained in the 2005 EU-SILC, this paper investigates the disparities in educational opportunities in Italy and Spain. Its main objective is to analyse the predicted probabilities of successfully completing upper-secondary and tertiary education for individuals with different parental backgrounds, and the changes in these probabilities across birth cohorts extending from 1940 to 1980. The results suggest that the disparities in tertiary education opportunities in Italy tend to increase over time. By contrast, the gap in educational opportunity in Spain shows a marked decrease across the cohorts. Moreover, by using an intuitive decomposition strategy, the paper shows that a large part of the educational gap between individuals of different backgrounds is “composed” of the difference in the endowment of family characteristics. Specifically, it seems that more highly educated parents are more able to endow their children with a better composition of family characteristics, which accounts for a significant proportion of the disparities in educational opportunity.

Suggested Citation

  • Antonio Di Paolo, 2010. "Parental education and family characteristics: educational opportunities across cohorts in Italy and Spain," Working Papers XREAP2010-05, Xarxa de Referència en Economia Aplicada (XREAP), revised May 2010.
    • Handle: RePEc:xrp:wpaper:xreap2010-05
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    7. De Donder, Philippe & Martinez-Mora, Francisco, 2017. "The political economy of higher education admission standards and participation gap," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 1-9.
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    9. Croci Angelini, Elisabetta & Michelangeli, Alessandra, 2012. "Axiomatic measurement of multidimensional well-being inequality: Some distributional questions," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 41(5), pages 548-557.
    10. Francesco Vona, 2011. "Does the Expansion of Higher Education Reduce Educational Inequality? Evidence from 12 European Countries," Documents de Travail de l'OFCE 2011-12, Observatoire Francais des Conjonctures Economiques (OFCE).
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Educational Opportunity; Family Background; Birth cohorts; Italy; Spain;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion

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