Abitur "Pays off", Particularly for Students from Less Well-educated Families

Acquiring the "Abitur", the German school leaving certificate equivalent to British A Levels, pays off. This is particularly true for students from households in which parents are less well-educated. In their later professional life, students who have completed the Abitur earn significantly higher wages than comparable individuals who do not hold an Abitur and who also come from a less well-educated background.

The benefits of completing the Abitur in terms of wages earned later in life are, however, far less significant for students from families in which one or both parents hold higher education qualifications. A comparison of employees without an Abitur coming from similar homes shows only a small wage difference between these two groups. This is the finding of a study carried out by the Mannheim Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW).

In aim of this study was to analyse the effect of holding an Abitur on the wage distribution of employees between 1984 and 2004. This was the period during which students who had been affected by the massive expansion of Gymnasiums (the German equivalent of the British grammar school) in the 1960s and 70s entered the workforce. At first glance, the academic certificates seemed to pay off for these students. While employees with an Abitur on average stayed in education for 16.7 years and earned a wage of 18.70 euro per hour in the year 2004, employees without the Abitur remained in education for just 11.5 years and earned a wage of 15.10 euro per hour. From an economic perspective, this hourly wage can be seen as an indicator of labour productivity. On average, employees with an Abitur earn a 24 per cent higher hourly wage than employees without an Abitur. In addition, employees with an Abitur work one hour and 23 minutes longer per week (44.4 hours on average).

A closer examination shows that in terms of wages some students benefit from the Abitur significantly more than others. This is can be attributed to variations in family backgrounds. Results show that the higher a child's parents' level of education is, the greater the probability that the child will attend a Gymnasium and acquire the Abitur. Therefore, the employees with an Abitur who were surveyed in the sample period between 1984 and 2004 predominantly came from educated homes. Surprisingly, wage allocations for employees with an Abitur do not differ significantly if they hypothetically did not have the Abitur. This research indicates that employees who attended a Gymnasium already exhibited higher labour productivity and therefore higher earning potential regardless of whether they attended a Gymnasium or not. It can be concluded that parents play a central role in the development of their children's abilities.

By comparison, the Abitur would have caused a great shift to the right in wage allocations for a random sample set of students, many of whom came from less well-educated homes. This indicates that attending a Gymnasium has a positive effect on earnings and therefore the labour productivity of randomly chosen students because these schools include more children from less well-educated homes.

Contact

PD Dr. Friedhelm Pfeiffer, Phone: (+49)621/1235-150, E-Mail: pfeiffer@zew.de