Abstract

In this paper, the authors provide a new measure of the duration of the School-to-Work-Transition (STWT) using retrospective information from EU-SILC data. The authors calculate the duration of STWT for Italian young people before (2006), during (2011) and after (2017) the economic crisis and compare the results obtained for 2017 with the corresponding results relative to Austria, Poland and the United Kingdom. This comparison shows an astonishingly slow duration of Italian STWT. The mean duration of STWT in Italy was 2.35 years (28 months) while in the other countries it was less than 1 year (11 months in Poland, 5.4 months in Austria and 4 months in the UK). Moreover, while in Italy the STWT of tertiary graduates lasts about 11 months, in the other countries it lasts less than 4 months. Further, the analysis of the Italian duration by gender and region of residence highlights a strong penalty for women and for young people living in the Southern regions. The results of this study suggest the need to reform the Italian education system, in particular the vocational educational path, introducing elements of the dual system including apprenticeship, improving the traineeship and professional training, and increase spending in pro-active employment policy programmes.