Relative wage premium as a result of residence relocation of university graduates

Abstract

Changing the place of residence after obtaining a university degree is one of the components of a broader issue of internal migration. The migration of people with higher education is a popular object of research, but until recently there were no data on migration immediately following graduation. The aim of the article is to demonstrate the occurrence of a relative wage premium related to this migration within a year after graduating, i.e. an increase in earnings resulting from moving to a different city. The study focused on groups of people who obtained their diploma in 2018 in the most popular fields of study within economics and technical sciences. An appropriate aggregation of data was made from the Polish Graduate Tracking System using the Social Insurance Institution (ZUS) data. It has been shown that the values of the relative earnings index for the analysed fields of study determined in this system were always higher for people who after obtaining their diploma in 2018 lived in 2019 in a voivodship other than their place of study, compared to those who remained in the powiat of their alma mater. This indicates the economic determinants of migration, i.e. the wage premium, related to the relocation of residence after obtaining a diploma.