Family Income and Participation in Post-secondary Education

Abstract

The relationship between family income and postsecondary participation is studied in order to determine the extent to which higher education in Canada has increasingly become the domain of students from well-to-do families. An analysis of two separate data sets suggests that individuals from higher income families are much more likely to attend university, but this has been a long-standing tendency and the participation gap between students from the highest and lowest income families has in fact narrowed. The relationship between family income and postsecondary participation did become stronger during the early to mid 1990s, but weakened thereafter. This pattern reflects the fact that policy changes increasing the maximum amount of a student loan as well as increases in other forms of support occurred only after tuition fees had already started increasing.