Legitimizing Education-based Earnings Differences in an Era of Educational Expansion: Evidence from 28 Countries

Status

Working paper, with Kaspar Burger.

Summary

Higher qualifications lead to better-paid jobs. Whether earnings do depend on education and whether they should are different questions. We study the second question: how strongly people endorse education as a basis for pay. Expansion can strengthen this norm, because education becomes more important for careers. It can also weaken the norm, because a degree loses value when more people hold it. We combine four waves of the International Social Survey Programme (1992 to 2019) for 28 countries with country-level data on educational attainment. The outcome is how important respondents think education and training should be for pay. Multilevel models separate differences between countries from change within countries. We also relate endorsement to a person’s relative educational position.