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This study shows that the intergenerational transmission of inequality in most of the 28 EU countries is higher than what a parent-to-child paradigm would suggest. While a strand of the literature claims that this is due to a direct grandparental effect, economic historian Gregory Clark maintains that multigenerational mobility follows a Markovian process. In his view, previous estimates of social status persistence are not only (severely) attenuated by an errors-in-variables problem, but are also constant across time and space. Using a survey covering all 28 EU countries, we provide evidence against such a "universal law of mobility". We show that, while in most EU countries traditional estimates of social status persistence are indeed downward biased, there are sizable differences across countries driven by country-specific factors. Further, for a few EU countries we cannot reject the hypothesis of a direct grandparental effect after accounting for a number of parents related covariates possibly affecting the multigenerational transmission process.

Tertiary education has been expanding hugely over the last decades, so that tertiary dropout students will constitute a growing distinctive group in future labour markets. University dropout is regularly discussed as a ‘negative’ indicator in terms of reinforcing socio-economic inequalities and being a sign of university inefficiency. However, research on actual career trajectory of dropout students is virtually non-existent. Using data from the 2011 Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) this study first validates the uncommon self-reported measure of dropout used and compares the percentage of adults with tertiary dropout experience between EU countries. Second, we examine whether tertiary dropout is a permanent decision as a considerable part of literature assumes. In a third step, we investigate characteristics of adults with dropout experience. Finally, we estimate the effect of dropout in terms of their employment status and success of entering managerial professions comparing results of logistic regressions and propensity score matching taking individuals’ socio-economic and demographic background, work experience and cognitive skills into account.Results indicate that consistently across countries dropout is repeatedly a ‘positive’ indicator in the labour market. This is first due to the fact that the dropout decision is often not a permanent one as well as that for those adults who do not reenrol into tertiary education labour market chances are better than for equally educated adults in about half of the countries examined

Using logistic and multilevel logistic modelling we examine non-response at the school and pupil level to the important educational achievement survey Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for England. The analysis exploits unusually rich auxiliary information on all schools and pupils sampled for PISA whether responding or not, including data from two large-scale administrative sources on pupils' results in national public exams, which correlate highly with the PISA target variable. Results show that characteristics associated with non-response differ between the school and pupil levels. The findings have important implications for the survey design of education data.

We provide new evidence about the degree of social segregation in England's secondary schools, employing a cross-national perspective. Analysis is based on data for 27 rich industrialised countries from the 2000 and 2003 rounds of the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA), using a number of different measures of social background and of segregation, and allowing for sampling variation in the estimates. England is shown to be a middle-ranking country, as is the USA. High segregation countries include Austria, Belgium, Germany and Hungary. Low segregation countries include the four Nordic countries and Scotland. In explaining England's position, we argue that its segregation is mostly accounted for by unevenness in social background in the state school sector. Focusing on this sector, we show that cross-country differences in segregation are associated with the prevalence of selective choice of pupils by schools. Low-segregation countries such as those in the Nordic area and Scotland have negligible selection in schools. High segregation countries like Austria, Germany and Hungary have separate school tracks for academic and vocational schooling and, in each case, over half of this is accounted for by unevenness in social background between the different tracks rather than by differences within each track.

In Germany, children are sorted into differently prestigious school types according to their ability at the end of primary schooling, normally at age 10. This early decision about children’s future schooling cannot be easily corrected. However, secondary school attendance has a huge impact on future career options, so that equality in pupils’ distribution to differential school types is important. This paper examines the impact of social and economic background on children’s school type if ability is held constant. The analysis is based on national data taken from two surveys of learning achievement, the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA). These data reveal that a large share of pupils in less prestigious school types would fit perfectly well in better school types given their measured ability. Children from rural areas, pupils from lower socio-economic backgrounds and boys in general have a significantly lower probability of being selected to the most academic school track even when their ability is similar to that of their urban and better socially placed counterparts.