First Generation Elite: The Role of School Social Networks

Cattan, Sarah; Salvanes, Kjell G.; Tominey, Emma

doi:10.1257/aer.20230582

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 enrolment 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.

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