1. University of Westminster
Changes in the extent of inequality in access to university education in Italy
Giorgio Di Pietro
University of Westminster
London
11 December 2008, Zaragoza

2. Motivation
Several studies (Evans and Schwab, 1995; Nguyen and Taylor, 2003) show that people from poorer family backgrounds are less likely to have access to university education than those from richer family backgrounds.
Equality of educational opportunity has been for a long time at the top of the policy agenda in Italy and several measures have been adopted in an attempt to encourage participation of individuals from less advantaged backgrounds.
However, in spite of all these provisions, there is evidence that Italy shows a high degree of intergenerational transmission of education (Comi, 2004).

3. Objective of the Paper
This paper attempts to look at changes in the university enrolment gap between people from richer and poorer family backgrounds in Italy between 1995 and 2001.
The period covered by this study is especially relevant given that in 2001 the Italian university education underwent a significant process of reform. One of the objectives of this reform is to induce behavioural changes that may make people from less privileged backgrounds more likely to enrol at university.

4. Data
The data come from three waves (i.e. 1998, 2001 and 2004) of a national cross-sectional survey (Percorsi di Studio e di Lavoro dei Diplomati) carried out by the Italian National Statistical Institute. Each wave consists of a representative sample of high school leavers who are surveyed three years after their completing their studies. Thus these data enable us to examine the post-high school decisions made by three different cohorts of individuals who completed their studies in 1995, 1998 and 2001.
We consider different individual characteristics that are likely to affect the decision to enrol at university including age, gender, high school final grade, type of high school. We also include indicators for labour market conditions such as unemployment rate and wage differential between university and high school graduates.

6. Parental education as a proxy for family background
In order to measure the difference in the propensity to enrol at university among individuals from different family backgrounds, we split them into three groups according to their parents’ education.
The first group refers to individuals who have at least one of their parents with a university degree.
The second comprises individuals whose parents’ highest educational attainment is a high school diploma.
The third group includes individuals whose parents’ highest educational attainment is less than a high school diploma.

7. Three indicators for educational inequality
Given our choice of the proxy for family background, we use three different indicators of the extent of educational inequality:
I1: the gap in university participation between individuals who have at least one of their parents with a university degree and those whose parents’ highest educational attainment is less than a high school diploma.
I2: the gap in university attendance between individuals who have at least one of their parents with a university degree and those whose parents’ highest educational attainment is a high school diploma.
I3: he gap in university enrolment between individuals whose parents’ highest educational attainment is a high school diploma and those whose parents’ highest educational attainment is less than a high school diploma.

9. University enrolment logits by cohort of high school leavers- Marginal effects (S.E. in brackets)
Parental education- Reference category is highest educational attainment is less than a high school diploma
Highest educational attainment is a university degree
0.381
(0.021)
0.388
(0.020)
0.374
(0.018)
Highest educational attainment is a high school diploma
0.169
(0.010)
0.164
(0.009)
0.157
Pseudo R-squared
0.275
0.285
0.270
Controls include: constant, gender, age, area of residence, type of high school, high school grade, repeated high school year, labour market conditions

10. Towards a decomposition analysis
The descriptive statistics show that in the 1995 cohort I1 is 51.6%. After standardizing for observed characteristics in the logits, this enrolment gap is reduced to 38.1%. This means that 13.5% out of the 51.6 % (i.e. 26.2%) is explained by the difference in observed characteristics. The unexplained residual (63.8%) is due to differences in unobserved traits of people from different family backgrounds.
Nevertheless, this method of inferring the extent of the unexplained gap in university enrolment probability is unsatisfactory as it assumes that people from different family backgrounds behave in a similar way, apart from a shift factor given by family background.
A more satisfactory technique is represented by the Oaxaca (1973) decomposition method.

11. Decomposition- Method
-Perform logit estimates of the probability of enrolling at university by cohort of high school
leavers and family background
Compute the predicted probability of enrolling at university for each typical individual
from a specific family backgrounds by cohort of high school leavers
This allows us to compute the difference in these probabilities following our indicators
for educational inequality. For instance, as regards I1
subscripts t and p refer to those individuals who have at least one of their parents with a
university degree and individuals whose parents’ highest educational attainment
is less than a high school diploma, respectively. Xt and Xp indicate average characteristics
for these individuals, respectively.

13. Decomposition- Method-cont
can be decomposed into: =
Next define the university enrolment structure that would prevail in absence of unobserved family background differences.
Whilst the first term in brackets represents the explained part of I1, the second and third terms together constitute the unexplained part of I1.

15. Results from the decomposition analysis
The major part of the university attendance gap between people from richer and poorer family backgrounds can be attributed to differences in observed characteristics.
Whilst in the period a reduction in the university enrolment gap has been accompanied by a decrease in the contribution of unquantifiable differences between people from richer and poorer family backgrounds, this conclusion does not hold if one compares results associated with the 1995 and 2001 cohorts.

16. Conclusions
This paper has attempted to examine changes in the university participation gap between people from richer and poorer family backgrounds. There are three main results:
First, while university attendance of people from richer family backgrounds is pretty stable over time, university participation of people from poorer family backgrounds exhibits significant variations. Attendance from the former group of individuals tends to rise over periods of high university participation rate, while it falls over periods of low general university attendance. .

17. Conclusions-cont
Second, educational inequality, measured as differential university attendance rates between individuals from richer and poorer backgrounds, has remained pretty stable between 1995 and 2001.
Third, our decomposition analysis indicates that there is no consistent evidence that the 2001 university reform contributed to a fall in educational inequality.