La mobilité sociale au Québec selon différents parcours universitaires

The main objective of this report is to present a descriptive analysis of the social mobility of bachelor's degree graduates from different Quebec universities according to field of study, a mobility captured here by the intergenerational transmission of income. Using administrative data on all Quebec students, it's possible to observe graduation rates as well as the earnings of graduates once they enter the labour market, all by parental income quintile. In terms of undergraduate attendance in Quebec, we observe an over-representation of students from more affluent backgrounds. Our results also suggest that undergraduate graduation rates are lower for students from low-income families and increase with parental income quintile. Our analysis of intergenerational mobility, using a transition matrix, suggests that recent university graduates have fairly good mobility relative to the population comprising all levels of education, and that students from less advantaged backgrounds have significantly higher mobility than their reference population. We also calculate, by university and field of study, a measure of intergenerational mobility that takes into account access to university education and upward mobility (moving from the bottom income quintile to the top quintile). We find that upward mobility varies across universities, but also by field of study, with institutions specializing in engineering and programs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics showing the highest upward mobilities. An important limitation of our data is that the time horizon following graduation is limited, so the observed employment earnings are not necessarily representative of graduates' permanent earnings.

[ - ]
[ + ]