Childhood Geographical Mobility, Local Opportunity Structures, and the Pursuit of Higher Education

While prior research links frequent childhood moves—especially within disadvantagedareas—to poorer educational outcomes, less is known about how changing opportunitystructures can offset some of these effects. Utilizing full population Finnish register data, weexplore whether relocating closer to higher education institutions (<30km) during childhoodleads to higher educational attainment by age 30, compared to both those who move withoutgaining access to improved opportunities and those who do not move at all. The study alsoconsiders the role of evolving local opportunity structures, such as the expansion ofpolytechnics in the 1990s, which may benefit those who remain in place. Our findings indicatethat stable, persistent exposure to improved opportunity structures throughout childhood ismore consistently associated with higher probabilities of completing higher education by age30 than is mobility toward such opportunities, with parental separation and parentalunemployment compounding the disadvantages associated with mobility.Keywords: childhood; geographical mobility; local opportunity structures; access to highereducation