A natural experiment with travel distance to universities and its relation to intergenerational inequality

• In Event: 3429 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 17. International Topics in Education and Inequality: Europe

Abstract

Geographical distance between young adults residence and the nearest university is known be related to enrollment in higher education. At the same time, participation in higher education and the field of study choices depend on social origins. We hypothesize, that less privileged students more often live further away from higher education and that their enrollment choices are more affected by distance to the nearest university due to transaction (travel) costs. In order to investigate these hypotheses, we make use of a natural experiment that changed travel times between different parts of Denmark remarkably and suddenly, the opening of the Storebælt crossing in 1996 (train connection) 1997 (road traffic). Our findings so far do not confirm that the new opportunities change enrollment patterns. Even though opportunities change and higher education expanded overall in the same period, the vast majority of young adults continues to enroll in universities that have traditionally been visited from upper secondary school graduates from their home region. This is especially the case for children from lower social origins.

Authors

• David Reimer, Aarhus University

• Felix Weiss

• Peter Rohde Skov, VIVE – Danish Centre for Applied Social Science