Abstract
In this paper, we analyse the employment–migration behaviour of 13,753 UK university graduates. In particular, we distinguish between five different types of sequential migration behaviour from domicile to higher education and on to employment. By controlling for a range of variables relating to human capital acquisition, local economic conditions and personal characteristics, we are able to identify the role of ethnicity in determining the interregional migration behaviour of university graduates.
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Notes
US evidence (Greenwood 1972) suggests that Whites are more mobile than non−Whites, and that this is also true for university graduates.
The fees for all university undergraduate courses in all universities in the UK are identical, with different levels of subsidy being paid by central government to equate the fees paid by students.
For example, here we employ the final degree classification as our individual-specific measure of human capital HK. The covariates of this obviously could not have been known by the individual ex ante when initially applying to university. A better measure to use would have been the individual secondary school A−level scores, before entering university. However, the degree classification of university graduates is known to be significantly and highly correlated with their secondary school A−level scores across a wide range of subject areas (Naylor and Smith 2004). Therefore, in the absence of individual secondary school A−level scores, this is the most appropriate indicator to employ as a measure of individual academic ability.
We employ these GDP per capita density variables as proxies for the position of a location within the national urban hierarchy. This is done based on the fact that there is much evidence to suggest that the generation of job opportunities particularly for UK university graduates, may be related to the rank−order of the area within the national urban hierarchy, which is centred around the southeast of England (Fielding 1992; McCann and Sheppard 2001). Also, the spatial domicile patterns of the non−White ethnic groups in the UK tend to be very highly correlated with densely populated areas, which also generally exhibit high GDP per capita values.
These variables can be interpreted this way within a MNL framework because they are given, irrespective of where the student subsequently chooses to study or work.
Class 1, class 2-1, class 2-2, class 3, in descending order, with class 1 being the highest
In terms of Bachelor, Masters or Ph.D. degree
Therefore, for example, the local employment conditions for an individual postcode observation are those of the county containing the postcode that identifies the location.
In England, seven of these counties are the metropolitan county councils covering the largest urban agglomerations of over one million people. In Scotland, the three separate island councils are combined into a single council for the purposes of our analysis. The average population size of our spatial areas is 408,035.
The 2,700 UK Postcode districts across England, Wales and Scotland have an average radius of 5 km. For urban areas, the average size is much smaller so that locations for most observations are accurate to within 1 or 2 km. The postcode districts have an average area of 84.9 km2 and an average population of 21,162.
Between 6 and 18 months after graduation
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Faggian, A., McCann, P. & Sheppard, S. An analysis of ethnic differences in UK graduate migration behaviour. Ann Reg Sci 40, 461–471 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00168-006-0061-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00168-006-0061-y