Can culture save young Italians? The role of cultural capital on Italian NEETs behaviour

Chiara Burlina, Alessandro Crociata () and Iacopo Odoardi ()
Additional contact information
Alessandro Crociata: GSSI, Gran Sasso Science Institute
Iacopo Odoardi: University of Chieti-Pescara

Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, 2021, vol. 38, issue 3, No 7, 943-969

Abstract: Abstract The increasing number of young people who do not study and do not work has become a relevant and timely socioeconomic issue. The role of the economic family background and the social context mitigate the risk of being not in education, employment or training (NEET). However, other factors such as evident regional disparities, suggest the need to investigate alternative remedies, in particular for the Italian context. Among these, we focus on cultural capital (CC) as a driver to discourage school dropout and a stimulus for pro-active behaviours in work participation. We test the role of CC (proxied by the accumulation of cultural experiences) on the rate of NEETs population in Centre-North and South Italy. We apply a panel vector autoregression (PVAR) approach to 2001–2018 regional NUTS2 data. Our findings highlight the positive effect of CC on NEET, and the impact is higher for southern regions. This result might represent a key of convergence between the two Italian geographical areas and pave the way for ad hoc policy measures to reduce the risk of becoming NEET.

Keywords: NEET; Cultural capital; Human capital; Panel data; North–south divide (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 J24 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40888-021-00219-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:epolit:v:38:y:2021:i:3:d:10.1007_s40888-021-00219-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40888

DOI: 10.1007/s40888-021-00219-7

Access Statistics for this article

Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics is currently edited by Alberto Quadrio Curzio

More articles in Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics from Springer, Fondazione Edison
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().