St-Denis, Xavier 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4646-085X; Prats, Natacha; Morselli, Béatrice et Lardoux, Solène
(2026).
The Influence of Grandparents on Access to Postsecondary Education
Canadian Studies in Population
, vol. 53
, nº 2.
DOI: 10.1007/s42650-025-00102-x.
Résumé
This study investigates the influence of grandparental income on postsecondary education (PSE) participation, providing novel evidence on multigenerational social mobility in Canada. Using a multigenerational sample drawn from tax data, we find that grandparental income has a significant direct effect on grandchildren's PSE participation, even after controlling for parental income. We also find evidence of a compensation effect, especially for access to bachelor’s programs: high-income grandparents partially offset the disadvantage of having low-income parents. However, the magnitude of this compensation is modest. In addition, the direct influence of grandparental income is attenuated once we control for additional parental characteristics such as education and occupation. This analysis extends our understanding of social mobility processes in Canada while highlighting how cycles of advantage and disadvantage persist across multiple generations. Our findings suggest that focusing solely on bivariate parent–child transmission instead of multidimensional measures of parental social origins may underestimate the extent of social reproduction and overestimate the degree of social mobility in Canadian society. Finally, we make a methodological contribution by demonstrating how Canadian tax data can be leveraged to study extended family networks despite significant data limitations stemming from the absence of a population register or longitudinal surveys in Canada.
| Type de document: | Article |
|---|---|
| Mots-clés libres: | multigenerational social mobility; intergenerational transmission; education; inequality grandparents; administrative data |
| Centre: | Centre Urbanisation Culture Société |
| Date de dépôt: | 13 avr. 2026 18:07 |
| Dernière modification: | 13 avr. 2026 18:07 |
| URI: | https://espace.inrs.ca/id/eprint/17068 |
Gestion Actions (Identification requise)
 |
Modifier la notice |