Childhood Geographical Mobility, Local Opportunity Structures, and the Pursuit of Higher Education.
While prior research links frequent childhood moves—especially within disadvantaged areas—to poorer educational outcomes, less is known about how changing opportunity structures can offset some of these effects. Utilizing full population Finnish register data, we explore whether relocating closer to higher education institutions (<30km) during childhood leads to higher educational attainment by age 30, compared to both those who move without gaining access to improved opportunities and those who do not move at all. The study also considers the role of evolving local opportunity structures, such as the expansion of polytechnics in the 1990s, which may benefit those who remain in place. Our findings indicate that stable, persistent exposure to improved opportunity structures throughout childhood is more consistently associated with higher probabilities of completing higher education by age 30 than is mobility toward such opportunities, with parental separation and parental unemployment compounding the disadvantages associated with mobility.
By Esa Karonen, Patricia McMullin, Elina Kilpi-Jakonen, Jani Erola
