The effect of education on migration: Evidence from school reform

A polytechnic, higher education reform took place in Finland in the 1990s. It gradually transformed former vocational colleges into polytechnics and expanded higher education to all Finnish regions. We implement instrumental variables estimators that exploit the exogenous variation in the regional availability of polytechnic education together with matriculation exam scores. Our IV results show that polytechnic graduates have a higher migration probability than those of vocational college graduates. However, a master’s degree did not increase migration propensity in comparison with a polytechnic degree. We also find that an increase in the availability of polytechnic education did not reduce migration.