Going to university? Family background and tertiary education enrolment in France and Italy

Differently from the presumption of standard economic theory, empirical evidence suggests that returns to education do not play the most relevant role in tertiary education enrolment. On the whole, the results of our investigation conducted on a probit regression model indicates that the cultural family background has a great influence on the young’s decision to go to university. The offspring’s own income is also very significant in all models, as the p-values are very good in both countries. The main difference between the two countries is that the influence of the father is much lower in France than in Italy, where the coefficient for the father’s education is relevant on average to the same extent than the mother’s education one.