Something Good Out of the Bad Times? The Impacts of Reduced Opportunity Costs on the Intergenerational Inequalities in College Enrollment

This research examines whether the reduced opportunity costs observed during the Great Recession resulted in changing socioeconomic inequalities in college enrollment. The results of the multilevel logistic regression analyses of American high school graduation cohorts 2003–2013 with data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics indicate that educational decision-making changed during the recession. The association between parental education and college enrollment weakened during the recession for both men and women, but the changes in the association between parental income and enrollment contrasted by gender. While the income differences in college enrollment were reduced among female high school graduates, they increased among male graduates. The opportunity costs at the time of graduation were linked with the decreasing influence of parental income and the increasing influence of parental education during the recession.