Regional Disparities in Education Attainment Level in the European Union: A Spatial Approach

Abstract

This article deals with the analysis of education attainment level across the 252 NUTS 2 regions of the European Union (EU) with consideration of the spatial aspect. Since the individual EU regions cannot be seen as isolated, the main aim of this article is to assess the impact of location on the education attainment level (percentage of population aged 25-64 with at least upper secondary education) during the period 2007-2015, as well as to investigate the impact of regional growth 2014/2007 on the education attainment level in 2015. The spatial analysis proved the existence of positive spatial autocorrelation and persistence of disparities in education attainment level across EU regions during the analysed period. The results of econometric analysis confirmed the expected positive impact of economic growth on education attainment level as well as the necessity to incorporate the spatial dimension into the model.