Is post-secondary education a safe port and for whom? Evidence from Canadian data

Diana Alessandrini

Economics of Education Review, 2018, vol. 67, issue C, 1-13

Abstract: Previous studies document that adverse labor market conditions, proxied by the unemployment rate, stimulate post-secondary enrollment. This paper shows for the first time that unemployment not only affects enrollment but also changes the composition of the student body and students’ educational path, with important consequences for intergenerational mobility. Results show that unemployment stimulates university enrollment especially among individuals with highly educated parents. This has consequences for educational inequality. Students are also more likely to choose university over community college when unemployment rises. Thus, labor market conditions affect the type of education and skills that students acquire. Further, unemployment is shown to affect the decision of workers to return to school and complete their unfinished studies or acquire additional training.

Keywords: Post-Secondary education; Unemployment; Intergenerational education mobility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 I23 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775716301005
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:ecoedu:v:67:y:2018:i:c:p:1-13

DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2018.09.005

Access Statistics for this article

Economics of Education Review is currently edited by E. Cohn

More articles in Economics of Education Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().