Parental education and the transition to master and PhD studies in Spain

In a context of full equality of opportunity, bachelor graduates’ decision to pursue further studies should not be affected by social origin. Using Spanish data, we analyze the role of parental background on the decision to study for a master degree and a PhD degree. We find that parental background may increase up to 10 percentage points the probability of studying for a master degree and close to 2 percentage points the likelihood of studying for a PhD. We use the KHB method to decompose the parental background effects into direct and indirect ones (Karlson et al., 2012). Indirect effects collect parental background’s influence via previous studies. Our results show that the parental background effect is not mediated by previous studies’ characteristics. Parental education directly affects the probability of studying for a master and PhD degree for bachelor graduates. In contrast, we find negligible effects of parental background on the likelihood of studying for a PhD degree for the master graduates. Since not all master programs give access to PhD studies, we argue that the decision to pursue a PhD is likely taken just after bachelor studies. We conclude that equality of opportunity in Spain can be improved by promoting master and PhD study paths during bachelor studies to all students, with particular emphasis on females and those students with parents without university education.