This paper provides sound, comparative empirical evidence on the duration of the school-to-work-transition (STWT) across 14 European countries using information available in the EU-SILC database. We define the duration of the STWT as the time needed for young people to secure their first regular job (at least six months) after completing their studies. We highlight the existence of dramatic inequality both across and within countries, namely by education level. The duration ranges on average from 13 (UK) to 34 months (Italy) and the gap still remains after 10 years. We then study the determinants of the duration by means of parametric survival models, with the distribution of hazard rates for finding a regular job being proxied by a Weibull distribution, which reveals the best fit based on a number of statistical tests. We test for omitted heterogeneity by means of the frailty survival model and find consistent evidence of positive duration dependence, suggesting that, as times passes, young people increase their hazard rate for finding a regular job as soon as they gain work experience and accumulate work-related competences.

本文利用EU-SILC数据库中提供的信息，为14个欧洲国家的从学校到工作过渡（STWT）的持续时间提供了可靠的比较经验证据。我们将STWT的持续时间定义为年轻人完成学业后获得其第一份正式工作（至少六个月）所需的时间。我们着重说明了国家之间和国家内部（即按教育水平）存在的巨大不平等现象。持续时间平均从13（英国）到34个月（意大利）不等，但差距在10年后仍然存在。然后，我们通过参数生存模型研究持续时间的决定因素，并通过Weibull分布来代替寻找正常工作的危险率分布，这基于许多统计检验揭示了最佳拟合。