Higher education is a large, uncertain, and institutionally differential variable of household investment. In some countries, tertiary education costs are largely subsidized through free or low tuition and direct student support, while in others, households face higher private costs through tuition fees, borrowing costs, and family contributions. This paper studies to what extent these education-financing regimes are associated with household wealth accumulation. Using harmonized microdata from the Luxembourg Wealth Study for 14 high-income countries, we estimate weighted multilevel models linking household net worth to country-level tuition and student-support systems. The evidence suggests three main conclusions. First, systems with low tuition and well-developed student supports are associated with households holding substantially lower private wealth compared to those with high-tuition systems and well-developed support. Second, the observed 14-country sample does not exhibit all combinations of tuition and support: there is a no high-tuition and weak-support cell. We therefore interpret the estimates as comparisons across institutional configurations rather than as cleanly separable causal effects of tuition and support. Third, random-slope and country fixed-effect interaction models show a positive association between low tuition and the wealth premium to high education, while the corresponding student-support interaction is small and statistically imprecise. Robustness checks using non-housing wealth and pension-regime controls preserve the negative average association with public education-finance configurations, although the positive high-education interaction is concentrated in total wealth. Education finance appears to operate as part of a broader public risk-sharing system, shaping private wealth through tuition exposure, debt risk, liquidity constraints, and the institutional conversion of education into assets.

Co-authors: Eva Sierminska (LISER)