Equality of opportunity and the expansion of higher education in the UK

• Published date: 01 December 2023
• Author: Vincenzo Carrieri,Apostolos Davillas,Andrew M. Jones
• Date: 01 December 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.12613

bs_bs_banner

Review of Income and Wealth

Series 69, Number 4, December 2023

DOI: 10.1111/roiw.12613

EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY AND THE EXPANSION OF HIGHER

EDUCATION IN THE UK

BY VINCENZO CARRIERI

Department of Law,Economics and Sociology, “Magna Graecia”

University of Catanzaro

APOSTOLOS DAVILLAS

Health Economics Group,Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia

AND

ANDREW M. JONES∗

Department of Economics and Related Studies,University of York

Using nine waves of data from Understanding Society (UKHLS), we study the expansion of higher

education in the UK and its consequences for levels of and inequalities in income, physical and men-

tal health. University expansion was characterized by a large increase in the proportion of graduates,

with higher rates of graduation among individualsfrom more advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds.

Having controlled for birth cohort and lifecycle effects, there is evidence of signicant inequality of

opportunity (IOp) in the actual outcomes. However, comparing actual outcomes with counterfactual

projections, that freeze the likelihoodof university graduation and the joint distribution of graduation

and circumstances to the pre-1963levels, we do not detect an impact of the expansion of higher education

on IOp in income and only small reductions in IOp in physicaland mental health.

JEL Codes: C1, D63, I12, I14

Keywords:equality of opportunity, higher education, entropy balancing, high dimensional xed effects,

health, income

1. INTRODUCTION

Equality of opportunity (EOp) is an equity concept that inspires many pub-

lic policies in contemporary Western societies such as the United States, some-

times known as the land of opportunity, the European Union, where the concept is

implicitly included in the European Pillar of Social Rights,and in the United King-

dom (UK) Equality Act of 2010. It reects a meritocratic ethic, with educational

Note: Understanding Society is an initiative funded by the Economic and Social ResearchCouncil

and various Government Departments, with scientic leadership by the Institute for Social and Eco-

nomic Research,University of Essex, and survey delivery by NatCen Social Researchand Kantar Public.

The research data are distributed by the UK Data Service. The funders, data creators and UK Data

Service have no responsibilityfor the contents of this paper.

*Correspondence to: Andrew M. Jones,Department of Economics and Related Studies,University

of York,Heslington, UK (andrew.jones@york.ac.uk).

© 2022 International Association forResearch in Income and Wealth.

861

Review of Income and Wealth, Series 69, Number 4, December 2023

achievement often seen as an important pathwaythrough which opportunities may

be translated into individual attainments such as income and health, mediated by

individual effort. In this context, access to university education may therefore be

a key part of achieving EOp (e.g., Jones, 2019). The expansion of participation

in higher education over recent decades is of particular relevance because it may

have inuenced the well-being of current generations and also because it is likely

to affect the set of parental circumstances that future generations will experience

during childhood and, consequently, their future well-being (e.g., Greenaway and

Haynes, 2003; Blanden and Machin, 2004; Machin and Vignoles, 2004;Chowdry

et al., 2013; Crawford et al., 2016). While the expansion of higher education has

typically generated benecial effectsamong all social classes and increased access to

higher education (Shavit and Blossfeld, 1993), it is not clear whetherthis increased

access resulted in changes in inequality in well-being. This paper focuses on the

long-term expansion of participation in university education in the UK that has

occurred since the landmark Robbins Report in 1963 and analyses its consequences

for levels of inequality of opportunity (IOp) in income and physical and mental

health.

Our aim is to explore the consequences of the expansion of higher education

for outcomes later in life. We focus on two dimensions of well-being, that have

both been used as outcomes in the literature on inequality of opportunity, namely

income and individual health, with measures that capture not just physical health

but also mental well-being especially as manyof the existing studies do not differen-

tiate between mental and physical health or focus on physical health (e.g., Trannoy

et al., 2010; Jusot et al., 2013; Li Donni et al., 2014; Carrieri and Jones, 2018;Car-

rieri et al., 2020; Davillas and Jones, 2020). Regarding income we mainly focus

on the seminal work on the measurement of IOp (Ferreira and Gignoux, 2011),

which employs equivalized household income measures as a measure of the overall

advantage/disadvantage at the household level; however, we have also implemented

further analysis using individual′s own income.

In terms of the inequity literature, the paper contributes to understanding the

determinants of observed levels of IOp in specic well-being measures, particularly

focusing on the long-term expansion of participation in university education in

the UK. Among others, the IOp literature includes analysis of income inequality

(see Ferreira and Peragine, 2015 for a review), educational attainment relevant

to secondary or tertiary education (e.g., Ferreira and Gignoux, 2014; Palmisano

et al., 2022) and health (e.g., Rosa Dias, 2009,2010; Trannoy et al., 2010; Jusot

et al., 2013; Li Donni et al., 2014; Carrieri and Jones, 2018; Brunori et al., 2020;

Carrieri et al., 2020; Davillas and Jones, 2020). However, a few studies aim to esti-

mate IOp in a set of different well-being measures (such as income, life-satisfaction

and multidimensional welfare measures) within the same study (Mahler and

Ramos, 2019). Despite differences in the methodological approach used, all these

studies offer a normative assessment of the distribution of the outcomes of interest

according to the EOp framework. Their ultimate scope is to identify, on the basis

of a given set of opportunities, inequality that is attributable to circumstances for

which individuals should not be held responsible.

While these studies advance our understanding of the fairness (or unfairness)

of modern societies, they mostly provide a static analysis of IOp in attainments that

© 2022 International Association forResearch in Income and Wealth.

862