First Generation Elite: The Role of School Social Networks

Kjell G Salvanes, Sarah Cattan and Emma Tominey

No 20004, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Peers; Elite university; Subject choice; Social mobility; Social capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I24 J24 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-03
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