Report

Intergenerational educational mobility and the COVID-19 pandemic

This report from UK think tank CEPEO looks at the differential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the labour market outcomes of graduate workers.

We examine the differential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the labour market outcomes of graduate workers by their family background. Specifically, we compare first in family (FiF) graduates, young people who obtained a university degree even though their parents did not, with their graduate peers whose parents have university degrees. We compare their labour market outcomes using multiple waves of data collected during the pandemic, which are linked to an existing longitudinal study and administrative data. We find that FiF graduates, both men and women, were just as likely to keep working during the pandemic as the graduate children of graduate parents. Our results, however, reveal substantial differences in the outcomes of graduates who stopped working, and these differences are heterogenous by gender. Female FiF graduates were more likely to stop working altogether or to be put on an unpaid leave and less likely to be put on furlough or paid leave than non-FiF female graduates. However, we find no such differences between FiF and non-FiF male graduates. Our results highlight how the COVID-19 recession has exacerbated the disadvantage arising from the intersectionality of socioeconomic background and gender and the prolonged impact of parental human capital for women.