When nonresponse makes estimates from a census a small area estimation problem: The case of the survey on graduates’ employment status in Italy

In this paper we frame the problem of obtaining estimates from the sur- vey on the employment status of graduates in Italy as a Small Area Estimation problem because of unit nonresponse. We propose to use generalized linear mixed models and to include two variables that can be considered proxies of the response propensity among the set of covariates to make the MAR assumption more tenable. Estimates for degree programmes are obtained as (semi-parametric) empirical best predictions.