Quantitative methods used to identify the causes of school dropout in EU countries

This paper aims to identify the most important causes that lead to an increased level of school dropout in European Union countries. Using quantitative methods we discuss the effects of some variables on school dropout. We considered the following variables: number of pupils per teacher, the share of education expenditures in GDP, unemployment etc. For estimation we used data sets recorded in the 27 EU countries during 2000-2009. For processing the data series panel methods are used: the common constant method, the fixed effects method and the random effects method. Among the important causes of school dropout that is evidenced by the estimated models we can mention the low level of the economic development of some countries in EU, the share of education expenditures in GDP and labor market characteristics at the national level.