Abstract
Educational expansion has substantially increased educational attainment across the globe. It has also made higher levels of educational attainment a more common prerequisite for many jobs and higher earnings. But do people believe that education should actually be important in determining how much people should earn? Have these beliefs changed alongside educational expansion, and do they differ between high- and low-educated individuals? To address these questions, we used nationally representative data from four waves of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP, 1992, 1999, 2009, and 2019) as well as country-level data on educational expansion from 28 countries (N = 112,788 individuals). Multilevel models revealed that—on average and across time—the study participants considered that education should be a very important criterion for determining earnings. The belief that education should legitimize earnings has strengthened with educational expansion, and it is stronger among high-educated individuals. We conclude that educational expansion has been accompanied by a trend toward greater recognition of education as a normative justification for unequal earnings, especially among the highly-educated population.