Risk Factors for Dropping out of High School: A Review of Contemporary, International Empirical Research

School dropout is still a relevant problem in the US, Canada, and European countries. The factors that determine, or contribute to, this phenomenon are still not clear and, especially in recent years, have been extensively investigated in the US, using large databases. This article presents a review of international literature from an inter-disciplinary perspective, takes a developmental systems theory as a theoretical framework and examines personal, social and contextual risk factors for dropout. Results show that several determinants are associated with dropout, such as truancy, lack of motivation, health, bullying, and living in economically depressed areas. However, at the current state of the art, little is known about how these variables interact and their specific roles in different environments. © 2017, Springer International Publishing AG.