Does Distance Determine Who Attends a University in Germany?

Katharina Spiess () and Katharina Wrohlich

No 118, SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP)

Abstract: We analyze the role of distance from a university in the decision to attend higher education in Germany. Students who live near a university can avoid moving and the increased living expenses by commuting. Thus, transaction cost arguments would suggest that the greater the distance to the nearest university, the lower the participation in higher education. We analyse this hypothesis by combining data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) with a database from the German Rectors' Conference on university postal codes. Based on a discrete time hazard rate model we show that distance to the next university at the time of completing high school significantly affects the decision to enrol in tertiary education. Controlling for many other socio-economic and regional variables, we find that 1 kilometre distance decreases the probability to enrol in higher education by 0.2 - 0.3 percentage points

Keywords: Higher education; distance to university; competing risk model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I2 R1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 p.
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-geo, nep-lab, nep-sog and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.87578.de/diw_sp0118.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does distance determine who attends a university in Germany? (2010)
Working Paper: Does Distance Determine Who Attends a University in Germany? (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwsop:diw_sp118

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SOEPpapers on Multidisciplinary Panel Data Research from DIW Berlin, The German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bibliothek ().