FAMILY BACKGROUND, HIGHER EDUCATION CHOICES AND SOCIAL MOBILITY - HOW CONTEXT SHAPES AMBITION

Education is generally considered a valuable tool to improve individual socio-economic status. In European peripheral countries, up to the late 1970s, only a small elite had access to higher education and such privilege guaranteed a comfortable socio-economic position, not only via the job market, but also by allowing the sustainability of pre-existing social links. From then on, democratization of access to higher education should have prompted a decrease in social and economic inequalities within and across countries. However, current data still reflects that, despite gained access to social uplifting tools, individuals from less favoured backgrounds appear to not have been able to close the various gaps separating them from the more privileged ones. In this chapter we analyse recent data to characterize higher education attendance in Portugal, highlighting some factors that may still block the socio-economic improvement of the less favoured students and suggesting policy measures to overcome them.