Pietrolucci, Andrea, Jascha Dräger, Nora Müller, and Marco Albertini. 2025. "The educational wealth divide in Europe: Post-secondary enrollment gaps across parental wealth components and countries." Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 101086: . doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rssm.2025.101086
The educational wealth divide in Europe: How parental assets shape children’s chances in higher education
Why do young people in some families have better chances of entering university or other post-secondary education than others? A new study sheds light on the role of parental wealth in this process, using harmonized data from 15 European countries.
The analysis shows that parental wealth is a key factor in shaping educational opportunities. Across almost all countries studied, young people from wealthier households are more likely to enroll in post-secondary education than their peers from less wealthy families. These wealth-related enrollment gaps are particularly pronounced in Southern and Eastern Europe, while they tend to be smaller in Continental Europe.
Importantly, not all types of wealth matter in the same way. The study distinguishes between net, real, and financial wealth and debt. Real wealth – and above all housing assets – emerges as the strongest driver of children’s educational advantage. Financial wealth plays a lesser role, and the impact of debt varies widely across countries.
The results highlight that looking at “wealth” as a single measure can obscure crucial differences between components. They also show that national context matters: the same form of wealth can translate into educational opportunities in one country, but not necessarily in another. Taken together, the study underscores that wealth is an important but often overlooked dimension of social inequality in education. It calls for more attention to the ways in which family assets, beyond income and education, contribute to the intergenerational transmission of advantage.