Family Background and Access to Post-Secondary Education: What Happened in the 1990's (Woking Paper 34)
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Authors
Finnie, Ross
Laporte, Christine
Date
2003-10
Type
working paper
Language
en
Keyword
Family Background , Post-Secondary Education , Access
Alternative Title
Abstract
This paper presents new evidence on the relationships between access to post-secondary
education and family background. More specifically, we use the School Leavers Survey (SLS) and the
Youth in Transition Survey (YITS)to analyze participation rates first in 1991, and then almost a decade
later in 2000. Overall, post-secondary education participation rates rose over this period. However,
participation is strongly related to parent’s education, and whereas participation increased for
individuals with more highly educated parents (especially those who went to university), they
increased rather less, or in some cases (especially for males) declined for those from lower parental
education families. The already strong “effect” of parents’ education on post-secondary access became
even greater in the 1990’s. Participation rates are also strongly related to family type, but whereas
those from two parent families continue to have an advantage over single mother families, the gap
generally shrunk in the 1990’s, especially where the mother had university level schooling. We also
find a number of interesting trends by province.