Spatial structure counts: the relevance of regional labour-market conditions for educational transitions to vocational training

Abstract

Regional contextual factors can have a crucial impact on educational attainment processes of young adults and subsequently on individual life chances. This paper develops a systematic approach of the spatial references of such contextual settings. The flexible concept allows combining aggregate data for configurations of regional units in order to empirically determine the spatial extension of relevant context effects. We apply this approach to assess the impact of unemployment on post-compulsory educational transitions in Germany. For this purpose we make use of data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSOEP)1 and merge these with administrative time series data from the Federal Employment Agency and the Federal Statistical Office. Our results indicate that the effects of unemployment on the adolescents’ transitional alternatives after lower and intermediate compulsory schooling have a specific spatial structure. Unemployment is positively related to the chances of entering further schooling or a vocational preparation track compared to a vocational training in the dual system. This is particularly the case when unemployment rates are high not only in the respondent’s residential area but also, a fortiori, in neighbouring and surrounding administrative areas.