Secondary School Choices in Italy: Ability or Social Background?

Aim of this paper is to provide an assessment of the relative contribution of primary and secondary effects in secondary school choices in Italy. Since prospective longitudinal data on schooling careers are not available for Italy, the analysis is based on the cross-sectional survey Percorsi di studio e di lavoro dei diplomati (ISTAT, 2004), which collects detailed information on individuals educational histories up to three years after the secondary school degree. A major issue to deal with is self-selection, as only secondary school graduates are interviewed. By employing the survey data together with administrative and census information, we derive estimates of the relevant distributions, correcting for selection bias. As lower secondary school final marks are assigned on a 4-level scale (satisfactory, good, very good, excellent), a semi-parametric version of the standard approach is adopted. The empirical evidence is that secondary effects account for a larger proportion of the social origin differential than primary effects; by comparing our estimates with those reported in the recent literature, we derive that the relative contribution of primary effects is substantially weaker in Italy than in the other countries.