97 research outputs found
Espansione dell’istruzione e disuguaglianza delle opportunità educative nell’Italia contemporanea
No full textThe paper analyses the relation between class of origin and educational attainment over time in Italy. The key question is whether the overall educational expansion that has occurred in the country has also brought about a lessening in the inequality of educational opportunities (IEO) by social class of origin. The main conclusion of the first comparative study on IEO suggested persisting class inequalities in education in almost all the 13 countries analysed, including Italy. In recent years, however, this conclusion has been questioned for an increasing number of countries and, lastly, by the first results of new comparative studies.
The paper treats educational titles as ordered categories and models educational attainment by class of origins and cohort using cumulative logits (ordinal regression). Differences in educational attainment depend on the parameters locating the cumulative logistic distribution of educational titles for a class and a cohort, and on the location of the “separators” between educational levels. This type of statistical model explicitly allows to investigate how differences among countries in the structure of the educational system and in the educational expansion affect IEO. We consider cohorts born between 1920 and 1969, four educational titles and six social classes (coded according to a reduced version of the EGP scheme).
Our results show a decrease of IEO across cohorts: this is true not only for the agricultural classes (as previous literature already noted) but also for the urban classes. This result is robust to different specifications of the cumulative logistic model
Senso civico e performance economica. Un’analisi longitudinale delle province italiane, 1980-2000
No full textThe paper builds on R. D Putnam’s research work on civicness in Italian regions and on the debate it started. Using both the conceptual frame and the empirical indicators developed by this literature, the authors study civicness and its relation to economic performance on the aggregate level. The data used are referred to Italian administrative districts (province) at three time points (early 80s, early 90s, early 2000s), and are analysed with LISREL models of structural equations.
First, civicness is modelled as a latent variable in a longitudinal measurement structure. Authors find that such a model can include, besides the indicators which are normally used in the literature (frequency of associations; participation to european elections; diffusion of newspapers), also a measure of participation to cultural activities, which is seldom used in literature.
Second, to study the relation between civicness and other ecological variables the authors use a simpler structural models with additive indexes. As for the relation between civicness and economic performance, the model shows that both phaenomena are strictly correlated, but reciprocal effects are not as strong as autocorrelations. Thus, they are quite independent, at least on the short and middle term. The magnitude of the reciprocal effects between civicness and the economy (controlling for the long term correlation) is roughly the same: this finding goes against what Putnam found analysing Italian regions.
Third, if one adds to this model a measure of human capital, the structure of the effects does not change at all. Fourth, if the model is extimated separately for the Northern and Southern districts, the structure of the effects between civicness and the economy changes: in the North a stronger effect of civicness on the economy is found, while in the South this effect does not exist but the inverse effect of economy on civicness is quite strong. This finding casts some doubts on the adequacy of this kind of measures and analyses, specially for the Italian case
Civicness and economic performance. A longitudinal analysis of Italian provinces, 1980-2000
No full textThe paper analyses the relations between civicness and economic performance at the macro level. It builds on R. D. Putnam's research on civicness in Italian regions and on the debate it started, and estimates LISREL models of structural equations with data for 95 Italian provinces from the 1980s to the 2000s. Firstly, the empirical analysis shows that civicness and economic performance are longitudinally correlated, that their reciprocal effects are not as strong as autocorrelations, and that these effects' magnitude (controlling for the medium-term correlation) is roughly the same. This finding is not in accord with Putnam's 'socio-cultural' theory of social change. Secondly, the mechanisms underlying the relation are studied, distinguishing short- and medium-term effects, and it is shown that civicness has a medium-term (20 years) effect on the economy, while the economy has a short-term (10 years) one on civicness. This medium-term effect is attributed to cohort change. Thirdly, the difference between Northern and Southern provinces is studied, estimating separate models for the two parts of the country: while the relations between civicness and economic performance still hold in the North, in the South they are less coherent and systematic
La paura di iniziare: come evitare i compiti scolastici
No full textIn questo articolo vengono presentati i risultati relativi a una ricerca condotta in diverse comunità per minori allo scopo di indagare la struttura delle interazioni relative alle principali routine quotidiane. La trasposizine sul piano formale di tali sequenze osservate nella vita quotidiana è stata realizzata tramite l'impiego di tecniche di scaling (scale cumulative di Mokken) applicate a ogni insieme di comportamenti che definisce una particolare routine oggetto di intervento educativo. Nello specifico in questo art icolo sono analizzate le sequenza relative al sostenere il rendimento scolastico attraverso i compiti pomeridiani. La sequenza che meglio descrive l'ansia relativa alla scuola prende forma e contenuto nella routine dei compiti che è sinteticamente descritta nella scala "non ce la faccio" che ha complessivamente un valore significativo per tutte el comunità esaminate
Genere, origine sociale e disuguaglianza di istruzione nell’Italia contemporanea
No full textIl lavoro studia l’andamento della disuguaglianza di opportunità educative (Doe) di genere nell’Italia del secondo dopoguerra, e l’interazione tra questo e quello della Doe dipendente dalle origini sociali, intese sia come classe di origine che come livello d’istruzione dei genitori. Lo studio è condotto sui dati dell’Indagine nazionale sulla mobilità sociale (1985) e dell’Indagine longitudinale sulle famiglie italiane (1997), e comprende 5 coorti di nascita decennali, dal 1920 al 1969. Si utilizza il modello logit cumulativo (logit ordinale) che consente di modellare insieme sia la disuguaglianza scolastica che l’espansione del sistema educativo.
I risultati confermano in generale quanto già noto in merito: la Doe di genere è diminuita, così come – in misura inferiore - quella legata all’origine sociale. Inoltre, le analisi mostrano che: a) la diminuzione della Doe di genere ha luogo ai livelli d’istruzione superiori, mentre nella scuola dell’obbligo persiste un vantaggio maschile; b) la diminuzione della Doe di genere è più forte nelle classi agricole, dove le donne erano più svantaggiate; c) a parte questo, la diminuzione è la stessa per tutte le classi di origine e per tutti i livelli d’istruzione delle famiglie di origine
Persistent Inequalities?: Expansion of Education and Class Inequality in Italy and Spain
No full textThe paper analyses inequalities in educational outcomes (IEO) by class of family of origin in Italy and Spain for five 10-year cohorts born from 1920 to 1969, using the cumulative logit (ordinal regression) model. In both countries the question is whether, as education expanded, the class IEOs remained stable or diminished. The dominant view in the 1990s was that, with the exception of a few countries, inequalities persisted. In the current decade the consensus on this is changing, and decreasing class IEO is now more often found. Italy has been given as an example of educational expansion while maintaining class IEO. Spain was not included in previous analyses. The results show clearly that class IEO diminished in Spain as well as in Italy; differences in the timing of expansion and change in IEO can be accounted for through the different institutional settings of the two countries. A more contained reduction of IEO is found in Spain than in Italy
Allocation and distribution : A discussion of the educational transition model, with reference to the Italian case
No full textThe main characteristic of education in the past century has been its expansion: a major stratification research question associated with this is whether the inequalities of educational opportunities among classes have persisted or changed (diminished) over time. The educational transition model (Mare 1980; 1981), adopted by the majority of scholars in the field, separates the study of allocation, that is class inequality in education, from that of distribution, the amount of schooling and its expansion, using conditional logits. A consequence of the way this distinction has influenced subsequent research has been the emergence of a sharp gap between macro-level research on the expansion of education and stratification studies.
This paper proposes to re-integrate research on allocation and distribution using cumulative logits (McCullagh 1980) to analyse the relation between class of origin and educational attainment. Such analyses provide explicit parameters for educational expansion, as well as a measure of class inequality in educational opportunities. A model for educational expansion leading to the logistic curve is sketched, and the relation between a cumulative logit analysis and the conditional logits of the educational transition model is analysed. Empirically, the Italian case is considered, where the cumulative logit analyses show diminishing class IEO, contrary to most of the previous literature. These results are systematically compared with those from the educational transition model and linear regression analyses. The difference, as it turns out, lies more in the interpretation than in the actual empirical results
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