 Unpacking the Countercyclicality of Post-Secondary Enrollment in the United StatesAlena Bicakova, Guido Matias Cortes, Kelly Foley, Jacopo Mazza and Peter McHenry CERGE-EI Working Papers from The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague Abstract: Using data from the Current Population Survey’s Education Supplement for 1977-2023, we explore two important, yet understudied facets of the pattern of countercyclical post-secondary education (PSE) enrollment in the U.S. First, we show that economic downturns are associated with higher enrollment probabilities at both 2- and 4-year colleges among young men, but only at 2-year institutions among young women. Second, we show that the overall increase in enrollment propensities during downturns is primarily driven by persistence (i.e., changes in enrollment among individuals with prior PSE participation), rather than matriculation (i.e., new enrollments). However, higher unemployment rates increase matriculation probabilities at 2-year colleges among 18-year-old men and women, and at 4-year colleges among individuals in their early 20s. Our findings improve our understanding of the dimensions along which aggregate economic fluctuations induce changes in human capital acquisition. Keywords: College Enrollment; Business Cycles; 2- and 4-Year Institutions; Persistence (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cer:papers:wp795 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in CERGE-EI Working Papers from The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague Contact information at EDIRC. |
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