Details
- Publication date
- 21 November 2013
- Authors
- Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture | European Expert Network on Economics of Education (EENEE)
- Geographical scope
- European Union
- Level of education focus
- Adult education
- Higher education
- School education
- Vocational education and training (VET)
- Thematic areas covered
- Education-to-work transitions, education and labour market
- Educational attainment and participation in education
- Educational effectiveness and efficiency
- Governance of education
- Investment in education, economic impact of education
- Lifelong learning
- Monitoring and quality assurance
- Quality and inclusive education for all
- Skills development
- Teachers and trainers
- Whole-school and whole-system approaches and partnerships in education
Description
Reducing early school leaving (ESL) to below 10% by 2020 is one of the strategic goals of the Europe 2020 agenda and a key benchmark in EU education policy. Developing effective policies to achieve this target requires a robust understanding of the causal links and the associated costs and benefits of ESL.
This report reviews how the costs of ESL are measured—covering private, fiscal, and social dimensions—and surveys policy interventions implemented to tackle the issue.
Private costs include lost earnings, reduced health outcomes, and lower life satisfaction. Fiscal costs arise from decreased tax contributions and increased reliance on public assistance. Social costs reflect reduced productivity, poorer public health, and increased crime rates. Measuring these costs typically relies on assumptions due to data limitations, and the report stresses the importance of identifying causal relationships using methods like instrumental variable techniques linked to compulsory schooling reforms.
The second part of the report evaluates policies across the EU, highlighting that many lack rigorous assessments that identify causal effects. As a result, there is limited evidence to guide policymakers on the most cost-effective interventions. Most high-quality studies are based in countries with robust data systems and traditions of sharing data with researchers. The report underscores the need for comprehensive data covering all dimensions—individual, fiscal, and societal—to evaluate policies using cost-benefit frameworks.
Key conclusions include that the absence of necessary data hinders policy evaluation and that comparing policy effectiveness requires consistent outcomes, targeted populations, and evaluation methodologies. Importantly, while general education policies show some positive impact, targeted interventions aimed at disadvantaged groups may yield higher marginal returns when properly evaluated and implemented.
Authors
Giorgio Brunello and Maria De Paola
Cite as
Brunello, G., De Paola, M. (2013), The costs of early school leaving in Europe, EENEE report.
