Assessing regional performance against early school leaving in Spain

As early school leaving has been shown to have a substantial impact on later life outcomes, it has received considerable attention in policy debates. However, national and regional differences in early school leaving are not necessarily due to differences in policymaking but might be the consequence of underlying differences in the economic and social structure of a region. This paper develops a procedure to account for regional differences in assessing performance in regard to early school leaving. The application focusses on Spain, which has a high rate of early school leaving and significant differences between regions. The results show that most regional differences can be attributed to population composition. However, three regions perform better once population characteristics are accounted for.