Young people’s literacy, numeracy achievements, and the school-to-work transition: a longitudinal study of regional variation

ABSTRACT

We conducted a study on a local scale targeting the relationship of economic capital, cultural capital, young people’s literacy, numeracy achievements, and the school-to-work transition. We investigated whether participation rates by very young children in early childhood education (ECE) may mediate the historical effects of economic and cultural capital. We analysed longitudinal data from a high-quality national database that included information from 103 Italian provinces. We used structural equation modelling (SEM), multi-sample SEM to investigate spatial inequalities, and mediation analyses. Vector Autoregression models were estimated to determine the temporal trend and the relationship occurring between economic capital and ECE. Results indicate that economic capital is associated with young people’s literacy and numeracy achievements and with the NEET rate, with only partial mediation played by the rate of participation in ECE. The association of cultural capital on the NEET rate is near to significance, but it is strongly mediated by participation in ECE. Together, these results imply that the rate of participation in ECE in the Italian provinces may mediate the effect of cultural capital, but only partly that of economic capital.

KEYWORDS:

• Economic capital
• cultural capital
• early childhood education
• school achievements
• NEET

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. https://www.istat.it/it/archivio/269316.

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Enrico Ripamonti

Enrico Ripamonti is Assistant Professor in Statistics at the University of Brescia. He is also an Affiliated Researcher at Milan Centre of Neuroscience, University of Milan-Bicocca. Research interests involve the development of new indicators, like inter-rater agreement indexes, and biostatistics. Applied work involves studying transition from school to work, ageing, quality of life, and the relationship between education and health.