Abbandoni scolastici e stratificazione sociale nell'Italia contemporanea

Early school leaving, despite being quite common in Italy, has not been studied much. There is a lack of data and quantitative research concerning its pattern over time and its relation to social stratificaztion and inequility. The paper contributes to this topic using the first two waves of teh ILFI data (1997,1999) which contain detailed information on both educational and occupational careers of a representative sample of Italians. This makes it posssible to decribe the pattersn over time of early schoool leaving in Italy for each level of schooling. The main aim of hte paper is, however, to integrate early leaving in the typical research questions concerning the association between social class of origin, education and occupational attainment. The genral problem is : what happens if education is measured taking early leaving into account ? More in detail two research questions are asked : (a) does the association between class of origin and education found measuring education according ot the highest title achieved still hold when early leaving is considered ? in other words: is school leaving classs biased ? (b) does the picture of the transition from school to work change when early leaving is taken into account ? how do early leavers perform in the labour market with respect to both those who do not even start and those sho complete a given educational level ?