Like Father Like Son? An Analysis of Opportunity and Discrimination in Tertiary Education for OECD Countries

The existence of a relationship between education level and the socio-economic results has been demonstrated and investigated in depth. It is well-known that a higher level of study is associated with better levels of health, a higher probability of obtaining a job, and higher perceived incomes. For these reasons, interest in analysing academic performance has grown in recent years. Data from the Education at a Glance annual report shows that there is great disparity in academic performance in OECD countries, particularly in terms of tertiary education. It emerges that more adults between the ages of 25 and 34 are attaining tertiary degrees than adults between 55 and 64. Moreover, for individuals aged 30-34 years who achieve a tertiary level of education, adults with at least one tertiary-educated parent are still more likely to attain a tertiary degree than individuals from families whose parents do not have a tertiary level of education. To measure this phenomenon, two aspects must be analysed: mobility and opportunity. “Opportunity” means the probability for a child to attain tertiary education regardless of the level of education achieved by the parents. “Mobility” implies the similarity in probabilities of achieving tertiary education between children from families with a different level of education. We introduce an index for each of these aspects and we rank the OECD countries according to these two indices. A comparison of the two rankings reveals conflicting results in some cases. Countries that occupy high positions in one ranking do not necessarily occupy equally high positions in the other. To overcome this contradiction, we propose seven different aggregate methods to combine the two indices in order to provide a ranking that accounts for both dimensions.