Lönar sig en master? En empirisk studie av lönsamheten för fortsatt eftergymnasial utbildning

Sammanfattning

This study examines how the income return to further post-secondary education has changedover time in Sweden, focusing on differences between bachelor’s, master’s and magisterdegrees. The empirical analysis is based on register data from 2008 onwards. In economics,education is commonly viewed as an investment in human capital, where individuals expecthigher future earnings in return for the time and income they give up while studying. Theanalysis is based on secondary data from Statistics Sweden (SCB) and includes real medianincome by education level, gender and year. The methodology combines descriptive statistics,graphical analysis and OLS regressions inspired by the Mincer earnings function. The aim isto examine if wage returns differ across education levels, how these returns have developedover time and whether gender differences remain.The results show that individuals withmagister and master’s degrees generally earn higher incomes than those with only abachelor’s degree. However, the wage gap between bachelor and advanced degrees hasdecreased over time, suggesting shrinking marginal returns to education and possibleeducation inflation.Gender differences are present in models with gender as a control, but wecannot establish statistically significant within-level gender differences in the interactionspecification. Overall, the findings indicate that further education remains economicallybeneficial, but the additional