The Effect of Higher Education Expansion on Subjective Social Status in Taiwan: A Mechanism-Based Apc Analysis

Ssu Chin Peng , Research Center for Taiwan Development, National Taipei University

This study investigated the effect of higher education expansion on individuals’ subjective social status (SSS) with the mechanism-based APC methods in Taiwan. Scholars argued that the education expansion can alter the social demographic composition within a specific society, which contradicts the conceptual ground of SSS, the reference group argument. Hence, this intrigued researchers to examine the effect of higher educational expansion on individuals’ SSS. This study applied the eight waves of the Taiwan Social Change Survey data (TSCS) as the primary analytical sample. TSCS is the national representative dataset that surveys modules of similar questions every five years to revisit major research topics like social inequality and civic behaviors. Since this study aims to estimate the long-term social change caused by higher education expansion, we adopted the mechanism-based APC methods, which scholars have argued as the currently fittest method for decomposing the “Identification Problem” of APC analysis (Fosse et al. 2020). The findings indicated that higher education expansion positively affects the self-evaluation of SSS for individuals both at the macro and micro levels. At the macro level, higher education expansion altered the social demographic composition, increasing the figures of those with college degrees and giving them higher SSS scores. This effect can also be identified in how college expansion increased the individuals’ highest educational years, which positively affects individuals’ SSS scores at the micro level. Moreover, this study unveiled similar trends in gender, illustrating how education expansion contributed to greater gender equality.

See extended abstract

 Presented in Session 98. Flash session 2 Economics, Human Capital and Labour Markets