The transition out of education and the initial steps into the labour market in the European Union

The general aim of this research is the study of transitions from education and into the labour market among youths under a simultaneous framework in order to control for the interdependency of such relevant events. An extended version of the human capital model has been applied using the European Community Household Panel. The empirical strategy has aimed at reflecting the independent and simultaneous determination of both labour market and education transitions. Results show that the expected labour market outcomes do not significantly contribute to explain demand for education, other factors being more important. Finally, in the school-to-work transition, demand-side and institutional factors turn to be very important, education attainment effects being blurred by the nature of our sample (students in different points of their programmes).(...)