First generation elite: The role of school networks

Arbeitspapier

High school students from non-elite backgrounds are less likely to have peers with elite educated parents than their elite counterparts in Norway. We show this difference in social capital is a key driver of the high intergenerational persistence in elite education. We identify a positive elite peer effect on enrolment in elite programmes and disentangle underlying mechanisms. Exploiting a lottery in the assessment system, a causal mediation analysis shows the overall positive peer effect reflects a positive effect on application behaviour (conditional on GPA), which dominates a negative effect on student GPA. We consider implications for income mobility finding that encouraging further mixing between elite and non-elite students in high school could improve mobility across the whole distribution.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: IFS Working Papers ; No. 23/18

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Education and Inequality ; Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity ; Job, Occupational, and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion
• Subject: Peers ; Elite university ; Subject choice ; Social mobility ; Teacher bias

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Cattan, Sarah ; Salvanes, Kjell G. ; Tominey, Emma
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS)
• (where): London
• (when): 2023

Further information

• DOI: doi:10.1920/wp.ifs.2023.1823
• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/284244
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET