Family income and participation in post-secondary
education
Miles Corak, Garth Lipps and John Zhao
Family and Labour Studies Division
Analytical Studies Branch research paper series, No. 210
Context
The
private and public economic returns to post-secondary education are well understood.
The federal government's innovation strategy emphasizes the importance of skills
and learning in fostering innovation and growth and has pledged universal access
to postsecondary education. Yet throughout the 1990s, the climate surrounding
university financing has changed markedly. Given the high expectation of participation
and the increasing financial burden of postsecondary education, access to post-secondary
education remains an important policy issue.
Objectives
The relationship between family income and postsecondary participation is studied in order to determine
the extent to which higher education in Canada has increasingly become the domain
of students from well-to-do families.
Findings
Postsecondary education
is no more the domain of students from well-to-do families than it was two decades
ago.
The participation gap between students from the higher- and lower-income
families attending university narrowed through the 1990s. This in part reflects
increases in the participation rates among students from the lower-income families.
It also reflects declines in the rates of those from higher-income families.
There were no significant differences in participation rates in colleges or vocational
schools across income classes.
The correlation between parental income
and university participation did become stronger, but only until about the mid-1990s,
just after tuition fees first experienced substantial increases. The strength
of the relationship has weakened since then.
This reflects the fact that students, in an era of rising tuition fees, borrowed more once changes increasing
the maximum loan limits were introduced to student loan programs. The average
amount of student loans rose significantly during the 1990s.
Data source: Survey of Consumer Finances, 1979-1997; General Social Survey,
1986, 1994, 2001.
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