American Economic Review Vol. 115 No. 12 2025
First-Generation Elite: The Role of School Social Networks
Abstract
High school students from non-elite backgrounds are less likely to have peers with elite-educated parents than their elite counterparts. 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 enrollment in elite programs and labor market earnings, then disentangle underlying mechanisms. Exploiting a lottery in assessment, a causal mediation analysis shows the overall positive peer effect reflects a positive effect on application behavior (conditional on GPA). When considering income mobility, we find that further mixing between high school elite and non-elite students could improve mobility.
- DOI
- 10.1257/aer.20230582
- Volume
- 115
- Issue
- 12
- Pages
- 4369-4403
- Language
- en
- Sources
- openalex crossref