The determinants of post-compulsory education in Spain

Abstract

In this article we explain why Spain is at the bottom of the developed countries in secondary education. We have made use of extensive information contained in the ECHP supplemented with labour market data. We find that higher rates of unemployment diminish the probability of investing in post-compulsory education and this effect differs across the population. Our results suggest that a ‘poverty effect’ makes access more difficult to secondary education in Spain.

Acknowledgements

We thank Javier Ferri and Antoni Cunyat for useful comments. The financial support of the IVIE is gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

¹ See OECD (2005).

² In fact, among OECD countries, only the Slovak Republic, Turkey and Mexico present worse figures.

³ Petrongolo and San Segundo (2002) also analyse the impact of family characteristics and local market conditions on the demand for post-compulsory education. However, they use a cross-section approach.

⁴ In the period analysed, the educational system (LOGSE) establishes that youngsters are not allowed to enter the labour market before age 16.

⁵ We perform a Chow test in order to observe the differences between men and women.

Table 2 Participation in post-compulsory education

Table 3 Post-compulsory education by income group – marginal effects