Something Good Out of the Bad Times? The Impacts of Reduced Opportunity Costs on the Intergenerational Inequalities in College Enrollment

Pöyliö, Heta

doi:10.1177/1360780419846516

Cited by 7 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…The countercyclicality of educational attainment unfolds in U.S. data across three decades (Card and Lemieux 2001; Charles, Hurst, and Notowidigdo 2018; Dellas and Koubi 2003; Dellas and Sakellaris 2003; Ewing, Beckert, and Ewing 2010; Light 1995; Méndez and Sepúlveda 2012; Pöyliö 2020). Kienzl, Alfonso, and Melguizo (2007) and Betts and McFarland (1995) show that the countercyclical relationship holds in community college, and Bedard and Herman (2008) find this pattern in graduate school.…”

Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Encouraged or Discouraged? The Effect of Adverse Macroeconomic Conditions on School Leaving and Reentry

Witteveen

2020

Sociol Educ

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Existing research generally confirms a countercyclical education enrollment, whereby youths seek shelter in the educational system to avoid hardships in the labor market: the “discouraged worker” thesis. Alternatively, the “encouraged worker” thesis predicts that economic downturns steer individuals away from education because of higher opportunity costs. This study provides a formal test of these opposing theories using data from the United States compared with similar sources from the United Kingdom, Germany, and Sweden. I investigate whether macroeconomic stimuli—including recessions and youth unemployment fluctuations—matter for enrollment decisions. Analyses rely on 10 years of detailed individual-level panel data, consisting of birth cohorts across several decades. Across data sources, results show enrollment persistence in secondary education is stronger in response to economic downturns. These patterns differ sharply for tertiary-enrolled students and those who recently left higher education. Surprisingly, U.S. youths display an increased hazard of school leaving and a decreased hazard of educational reenrollment in response to adverse conditions. In contrast, European youths tend to make enrollment decisions supportive of discouraged-worker mechanisms or insensitivity to adverse conditions. The U.S.-specific encouraged-worker mechanism might be explained by the relative importance of market forces in one’s early career and the high costs of university attendance, which induces risk aversion with regard to educational investment. The discussion addresses the consequences for educational inequality.

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Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Encouraged or Discouraged? The Effect of Adverse Macroeconomic Conditions on School Leaving and Reentry

Witteveen

2020

Sociol Educ

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“…Income gaps in college enrollment and completion have widened for birth cohorts born from the 1950s through the 1980s (Bailey and Dynarski 2011;Belley and Lochner 2007;Chetty et al 2014;Ziol-Guest and Lee 2016;Duncan, Kalil, and Ziol-Guest 2017;Snyder, de Brey, and Dillow 2019;Jackson and Holzman 2020). A handful of studies examining trends for recent cohorts coming of age during or after the Great Recession hint at income gradients modestly weakening since the Great Recession (Chetty et al 2014;Haider and McGarry 2018;Jackson and Holzman 2020;Pöyliö 2020). 1 The NCES finding showing dramatic equalization for the post-Recession years is a clear outlier.…”

Section: Trends In Income-gradients In College-goingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…All of the studies describing post-secondary educational behavior during the Great Recession by necessity look at what we call "immediate college enrollment"--college enrollment soon after HSD/GED receipt (Pöyliö 2020;Snyder et al 2019) or on trends in college enrollment at age 19 (Chetty et al 2014;Jackson and Holzman 2020). This is worthwhile as immediate college enrollment is associated with eventual BA attainment (Roksa and Velez 2012), but now sufficient time has elapsed for research to also describe trends in inequalities in degree attainment for cohorts coming of age during the recession, which is another contribution of this study.…”

Section: Trends In Income-gradients In College-goingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Changes in Push-and Pull-Factors in College-Going College enrollments tend to be "countercyclical"--rising during periods of economic contraction (Barr and Turner 2013a;Betts and McFarland 1995;Long 2014). Pöyliö (2020) argued this should especially be the case for young adults from low-income families. When jobs are scarce, the opportunity costs of attending college, in the form of foregone wages, declines.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Income Inequalities in College Education During and After the Great Recession

Klugman¹,

Arteta²,

Lee³

2022

Preprint

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Prior research using the Current Population Surveys (CPS) documents a dramatic equalization in U.S. college enrollments based on family income starting in 2014. However, the measurement of income for independent young adults is problematic; we correct for this by imputing their incomes. We complement our re-analysis of CPS data with data from the Panel Study for Income Dynamics-Transition Into Adulthood (PSID-TA). Both datasets show moderate, non-significant reductions in the income gap in college enrollments for cohorts coming of age during and after the Recession. Extending the CPS analysis to examine inequalities during the COVID pandemic, we show more or less unchanged inequalities for the cohort coming of age in 2020. Using the PSID-TA to examine degree attainment, we again find stable income inequalities in obtaining any degree and a BA degree for pre-Recession and Recession-era cohorts.

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“…Extending past literature, we additionally consider opportunity costs, that is the time invested in obtaining a university degree, instead of taking on a paid job. Opportunity costs are particularly burdensome for students from economically disadvantaged households [ 40 , 41 ]. During the pandemic, students from non-academic households may have felt an even stronger urge to enter paid employment to avoid financial hardship for their families.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social disparities in students’ intention to enter higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic

2022

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Research consistently shows that students from academic households are more likely to enter higher education than students from non-academic households. These inequalities are only secondarily due to differences in performance (i.e., primary effects), but mostly due to students’ decision making behavior (i.e., secondary effects). The relative share to which primary effects and secondary effects mediate the effect of students’ educational background on their intention to enter higher education is affected by external conditions. One significant external influence that may have had an impact on social disparities in students’ educational choices is the COVID-19 pandemic. Herein, we present data from N = 596 upper secondary students (41.6% from non-academic households) that were collected in Germany in April 2021. Building on rational choice theory, we scrutinized students’ expected benefits (i.e., employment prospects and personal significance), costs (i.e., direct costs and opportunity costs), and subjective probability of success in pursuing higher education as important psychological pillars for their intention to enter higher education. Results show that about 14% of social differences in students’ intention to enter higher education were due to primary effects, whereas almost 77% were explained by secondary effects. Specifically, we found that differences in the evaluation of benefits most strongly contributed to social inequalities in students’ intention to enroll in higher education. Compared to research on pre- COVID-19 cohorts, our results point to shifts in existing patterns of inequalities in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Something Good Out of the Bad Times? The Impacts of Reduced Opportunity Costs on the Intergenerational Inequalities in College Enrollment

Cited by 7 publications

References 43 publications

Encouraged or Discouraged? The Effect of Adverse Macroeconomic Conditions on School Leaving and Reentry

Encouraged or Discouraged? The Effect of Adverse Macroeconomic Conditions on School Leaving and Reentry

Income Inequalities in College Education During and After the Great Recession

Social disparities in students’ intention to enter higher education during the COVID-19 pandemic

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