The labor market returns to ‘first in family’ university graduates

Anna Adamecz-Völgyi, Morag Henderson and Nikki Shure
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Morag Henderson: UCL Social Research Institute, University College London, 27 Woburn Square, London WC1H 0AA

No 21-20, DoQSS Working Papers from Quantitative Social Science - UCL Social Research Institute, University College London

Abstract: We examine how first in family (FiF) graduates (those whose parents do not have university degrees) fare on the labor market. We find that among women, FiF graduates earn 7.4% less on average than graduate women whose parents have a university degree. For men, we do not find a FiF wage penalty. In some specifications FiF men actually earn a premium, although this relationship is not stable across all robustness checks. A decomposition of the wage difference between FiF and non-FiF graduates reveals that FiF men earn higher returns on their endowments than non-FiF men and thus compensate for their relative social disadvantage, while FiF women do not. We also show that a substantial share of the graduate gender wage gap is due to, on the one hand, women being more likely to be FiF than men and, on the other hand, that the FiF wage gap is gendered. Lastly, we estimate the returns to graduation for potential FiF and non-FiF young people. We find that the wage returns to graduation are not lower among FiF graduates compared to those who match their parents with a degree. The effects of coming from a lower educated family are large and positive for men and large and negative for women in general, irrespective of graduation. We provide some context, offer explanations, and suggest implications of these findings.

Keywords: socioeconomic gaps; intergenerational educational mobility; higher education; labor market returns; gender economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 I26 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-06-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-lma
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http://repec.ioe.ac.uk/REPEc/pdf/qsswp2120.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The labor market returns to “first-in-family” university graduates (2023)
Working Paper: The labor market returns to 'first in family' university graduates (2022)
Working Paper: The labor market returns to ‘first in family’ university graduates (2021)
Working Paper: The Labor Market Returns to 'First in Family' University Graduates (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:qss:dqsswp:2120

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