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

Abstract

This study examines how the income return to further post-secondary education has changed over time in Sweden, focusing on differences between bachelor’ s, master’ s and magister degrees. 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 expect higher future earnings in return for the time and income they give up while studying. The analysis is based on secondary data from Statistics Sweden (SCB) and includes real median income by education level, gender and year. The methodology combines descriptive statistics, graphical analysis and OLS regressions inspired by the Mincer earnings function. The aim is to examine if wage returns differ across education levels, how these returns have developed over time and whether gender differences remain.The results show that individuals with magister and master’ s degrees generally earn higher incomes than those with only a bachelor’ s degree. However, the wage gap between bachelor and advanced degrees has decreased over time, suggesting shrinking marginal returns to education and possible education inflation.Gender differences are present in models with gender as a control, but we cannot establish statistically significant within-level gender differences in the interaction specification. Overall, the findings indicate that further education remains economically beneficial, but the additional