Earnings of university dropouts across Europe

Francesco Berlingieri and Theresa Bolz

No 20-085, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: This paper investigates relative earnings of individuals leaving tertiary education without a degree across 18 European countries employing survey data on adult workers. We find that, on average, university dropouts earn 8% more than those never enrolling into tertiary education, but 25% less than university graduates. Moreover, university dropouts do not appear to have better employment chances than other upper secondary graduates while they have a significantly lower employment probability than those graduating from tertiary education. We document substantial heterogeneity across countries concerning whether university attendance without completion is rewarded in the labour market. We find some suggestive evidence that university dropouts are less penalised in terms of earnings in countries with a lower share of tertiary graduates and with more flexible labour market policies.

Keywords: university dropout; returns to higher education; international comparisons (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 I26 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-lma
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:20085

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