The present work constitutes an application to data from Uruguay of the relationship between the availability of household resources and the assistance of young people to tertiary education. The approach adopted is to combine the most important aspects in explaining the demand for education, such as the developments of Gary Becker, with the most recent Social Capital.
The methodology used for the analysis of the determinants of the demand for tertiary education was the adjustment of different econometric models of qualitative dependent variable. The results obtained do not allow us to reject the hypothesis that the set of household assets, and specifically Social Capital, explain significantly the attendance of young people to university education.
The work also explores different determinants of the “supply” side of education, especially those related to the location of tertiary education services.