Entering postsecondary education after job loss: Family-level considerations

Every year, thousands of Canadian workers lose their job. The opportunities for coping with job loss through postsecondary education (PSE) transitions might be unequally distributed across Canadian families, perhaps even more so than across Canadian workers. Using data from Statistics Canada’s Longitudinal Worker File (LWF), the T1 Family File (T1FF), the Post-Secondary Information System (PSIS), and the 2006 Census of Population, this study quantifies the degree to which the likelihood of entering PSE or a new field of study after job loss varies, all else equal, across types of family units and, among dual-earner couples, with the earnings or the risk of job loss of the spouse.