Højest løn til de unge dimittender - især blandt mænd

Resumé

Trond Beldo Klausen: Younger graduates get better pay Danish university graduates are nearly 30 years old when they complete their studies. Therefore lowering the age of graduation would serve to increase the number of people on the labour market. This will increase the individual’s aggregated lifetime income due to more years spent on the labour market. On the other hand, it has also been argued that the apparent waste of time allows young people to gain qualifications that enable them to enhance their creativity and competence, characteristics that are increasingly important in a globalized economy. If this is the case, it should also be reflected in their earnings after graduation (assuming that there is a relationship between productivity and earnings). This paper does not confirm that high graduation age enhances the value of people’s labour power. Age at graduation, rather, is negatively related to earnings at any given level of seniority. This pattern is strongest for men in private companies, among whom there is a substantial earnings gap even when controlling for working hours, unemployment, high school grade point average, educational field, social class origin and number of children below 18 years of age. There is a substantial gap in lifetime income between individuals with the same education but with different ages at graduation in addition to the difference caused by the different number of years spent on the labour market.