Figure showing intergenerational mobility estimates into doctoral education for 26 European countries and five regional country groups.
Nordics are slightly more mobile — no surprise — but across a highly diverse set of countries and education systems, the degree of intergenerational mobility into the PhD is both relatively high and remarkably similar.
Screenshot of the title page of the paper titled "Intergenerational mobility into doctoral education across Europe". Abstract: Despite increasing concerns over socioeconomic barriers in access to doctoral education, relatively little is known about the degree to which PhDs are selected in terms of their social background. In this paper, we use combined data on over 200~000 individuals from the European Social Survey, the European Values Study, and the World Values Survey to estimate the strength of the relationship between parental education and child PhD attainment within 26 European countries. We find that intergenerational mobility into PhD degrees is somewhat higher in the Nordic countries, and somewhat lower in the Eastern European countries in our sample, but also that mobility is generally high, that PhDs are socioeconomically diverse, and that mobility differences between the countries in our sample are generally small.
Are European universities exclusionary ivory towers, limiting access to doctoral education to children of the elites?
Short answer: No.
New paper with @economistatwork.com et al forthcoming in @europeansocieties.bsky.social (🧵 1/4)
The next step is realizing how many computer systems will reject it thinking that it's a mistyped personnummer.
Duo accepts Yubikeys nowadays, right? Yubikeys are cool?
We have a new working paper: “The (Un)importance of School Assignment”. 1/9
www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/wuizq...