Selective College Access and Intergenerational Mobility

Lutz Hendricks, Tatyana Koreshkova and Oksana Leukhina

No 2024-030, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Abstract: This paper studies how admissions preferences for lower-income students, alone or combined with information provision, affect college sorting, intergenerational earnings mobility, and aggregate earnings. We develop a quantitative model of college choice with quality-differentiated college types. We find that income-adjusted admissions substantially increase lower-income enrollment at selective colleges and improve intergenerational earnings mobility. Even larger-scale reforms generate only a slight decline in aggregate earnings.

Keywords: college quality; human capital; selective college access; intergenerational mobility; income-adjusted admissions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 I26 J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2024-09-13, Revised 2026-08-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dge and nep-lma
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedlwp:98881

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DOI: 10.20955/wp.2024.030

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