Equalizing education, equalizing opportunity? How education shapes the origin-destination link

This study investigates the impact of various educational equalization strategies on labor market disparities by social origin in Great Britain. Specifically, we examine three hypothetical interventions: 1) equalizing higher education rates across social origin groups, 2) equalizing the labor market returns to higher education across social origin groups, and 3) randomly assigning higher education within each social origin group. We hypothesize that equalizing access to higher education would reduce labor market disparities, while the random assignment of high-er education within origin groups would increase them. Reframing conflicting arguments in an ongoing debate, we propose competing hypotheses on whether equalizing returns to higher education increases or decreases labor market disparities. To test these hypotheses, we use a novel non-parametric decomposition method and longitudinal data from the 1970 British Cohort Study. For both sexes, our findings show that equalizing higher education attainment rates would reduce labor market disparities, whereas randomly assigning higher education within origin groups would have no significant impact. The effect of equalizing the benefits of higher education varies by sex and differs depending on whether wages or occupational out-comes are considered.