Early school leavers in their later (adult) life and social consequences

While addressing the consequences of ESL in adult life we encounter different conceptions of the importance of a certain type of consequence. In Europe, one of the most often addressed is certainly the unemployment of ESLrs since it has the most evident impact on both the labour market and economic growth (Alphen, 2009). However, the consequences of ESL for individuals are much wider and more far-reaching.

In an effort to minimise ESL rates, several attempts by different policymakers (e.g. EENEE, 2013) have been made to estimate the costs of ESL on different levels. The basis most commonly used in the literature for estimating such costs is Psacharopoulos’ (2007) framework for estimating the costs of ESL that addresses various areas of ESL consequences. The author defines the outcomes of ESL on three levels: private, social and fiscal (see Figure 1). On the private level, the author lists the higher incidence and duration of unemployment, lower initial and lifetime earnings, inferior health status, less risk aversion, reduced lifelong-learning participation, a lower quality of social capital and lower lifetime satisfaction. On the social level, he points to increased criminality, lower positive spill-over effects of co-workers, a lower rate of economic growth, lower intergenerational effects on children and parents, inferior public health assistance access, higher unemployment rates and lower social cohesion. On the fiscal level, he sees the most evident effects of ESL in lower tax revenues, higher unemployment and welfare payments, higher public health expenditures, increased police expenditures and higher criminal justice expenditure. Psacharopoulos (2007) also states there are direct and indirect effects between the duration of education and different aspects of consequences. For example, the direct effect of education on a health outcome is better awareness among the more educated of the harmful effects of smoking. Indirect effects arise when, for an example, a worker’s income supports his ability to pay for high quality health services, which leads to a reduced burden of disease on society (European Commission, 2010 and 2013). Since Psacharopoulos’ ESL consequences framework is one of the most widely used, including by the European Commission, we also employ it for its definition of the consequences of ESL on which our further descriptions are based.

Figure 1. Consequences of ESL as defined by Psacharopoulos (2007)

The present article has two aims. The first is to focus on and describe the consequences of ESL that affect an individual on the private and social levels. Such ESL consequences have the biggest impact on an individual’s life, and his/her social functioning. At this point, we will not focus on the fiscal consequences of ESL and certain aspects of social consequences with a more widespread, societal impact (e.g. a lower rate of economic growth, higher unemployment rates and lower social cohesion). The consequences that will not be addressed in this article are coloured in grey in Figure 1. Since we are examining social consequences from the individual’s perspective, i.e. the effects ESL has on an individual’s social life and closer surroundings, some private and social consequences are linked to the same area of an individual’s life (e.g. less risk aversion and increased criminality). Accordingly, we combined private and social consequences with a similar content. The article’s second aim is to draw attention to the fact that ESL has a long-reaching effect that greatly impacts an individual’s quality of life in different areas and to point out it is important to raise awareness of the consequences it can bring in order to prevent it on time.

When reviewing the literature in the area of the consequences ESL holds for an individual who has left school early, we first conducted a literature search of the scientific EBSCOhost online research databases (Academic Search Complete, ERIC, PsycARTICLES, PsycBOOKS, PsycINFO, and SocINDEX with Full Text databases). The main keywords initially used were: ESL and social consequences and consequences of ESL. This yielded a limited set of results. By searching for related results online we noticed the consequences of ESL are often described together with the antecedents of ESL and the costs of ESL on the national and European levels. In this way, we extended our online research databases search with keywords referring to the antecedents and consequences of ESL, the costs of school failure and calculating the costs of ESL. We also examined references cited in the reviewed articles and paid special attention to the reports of different European Commission expert group reports, i.e. the European Expert Network on Economics of Education (EENEE). Texts taken into account had to address the private and social consequences of ESL along with direct and indirect interactions between different areas of consequences.

In this section, we further describe the private and social consequences of ESL as defined in the introduction. Thus, the private and social far-reaching consequences of ESL we present in this section are: higher incidence and duration of unemployment, lower initial and lifetime earnings, inferior health status and public health assistance access, less risk aversion and increased criminality, reduced lifelong-learning participation, lower quality of social capital (lower positive spill-over effects of co-workers) and lower lifetime satisfaction (negative intergenerational effects).

As seen from the study results stated above relating to the long-term consequences of ESL, all of the consequences are somehow interrelated and together form an overall impact on ESLrs’ quality of life, including in adulthood. However, different researchers pose a question regarding the causality of those effects. Some authors (e.g. Crum et al., 1998; Hawkins et al., 1992; Henry et al., 1999; Jarjoura, 1993; Lamb, 1994; Silbereisen, Robins, & Rutter, 1995) suggest there is a causal association between leaving school without qualifications and later outcomes, such that: a) leaving school without qualifications reduces opportunities for social participation and integration; and b) reduced opportunities for social participation are reflected in higher rates of crime and other maladaptive behaviours. This implies that lowering the number of ESLrs will have a positive effect by way of reducing crime, substance use and welfare dependence. Some authors (e.g. Bridgeland, DiIulio, and Morison, 2006; Fergusson et al., 2002) oppose this point of view and describe these associations as non-causal. Their interpretation is that a wide range of adverse social, personal, educational and behavioural factors were present prior to an individual’s ESL such as a disadvantaged family background, lower cognitive ability, behavioural and adjustment problems etc. Further, that those factors are the ones that are reflected in an individual’s poorer social functioning and maladaptive behaviours in later life. In this context, ESL is merely a side-effect of those adverse factors and is a form of maladaptive behaviour.

However, this does not diminish education’s role and impact in providing equal opportunities for all students, regardless of their background, as a tool for combatting ESL. There is also evidence from a 21-year longitudinal study (Fergusson et al., 2002) which confirms that ESL is an important point in an individual’s life that later affects his/her quality of life in the sense of a greater risk for adverse outcomes including crime, substance abuse or dependence, welfare dependence and reduced participation in any form of education or training, i.e. behaviours that proved to be less present in a non-ESL population.

This article aimed to investigate different personal and social aspects of the consequences of ESL for an individual’s later life. Although there is no consensus regarding the causality between ESL and various private and social consequences, we may draw the conclusion that students at risk are individuals with specific social, personal, educational and behavioural characteristics who are more at risk of experiencing different negative consequences of ESL throughout their lives. As evident from the European Commission’s review reports on the consequences of ESL (2010 and 2013), lower education levels are associated with negative consequences like lower earnings and savings, lower labour market participation, worse health and lower health insurance, lower quality of encouraging social ties, higher levels of poverty and higher levels of criminal behaviour throughout an individual’s life. ESL therefore holds important negative far-reaching effects for an individual’s overall well-being.

Sweeten and colleagues (2009) point to an important moment when addressing the consequences of ESL. They state the effects of ESL depend on the reason for leaving school early. Students sometimes leave school because they find it boring, sometimes because they discover they are academically far behind, while others drop out for family reasons or financial demands to start work in order to survive. However, according to the authors the reason for ESL is an indicator of which developmental direction they are heading in and what will be their new identity. If ESLrs form a new, stable identity attached to another conventional institution (e.g. work), this will mean an entirely different set of consequences than dropping out with no direction, which often leads to increased crime and other maladaptive behaviours. And this is the point at which prevention and intervention programmes should take action so as to avoid or at least extenuate the negative personal and social consequences of ESL that affect all areas of an individual’s life. Potential solutions include greater collaboration between governments, businesses, communities, families and education and the implementation of a systematic approach to identifying and assisting young people at risk of ESL (Business Council of Australia, 2003; European Commission, 2013).