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Growing Wealth Gaps in Education

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  • Fabian T. Pfeffer

    (University of Michigan)

Abstract

Prior research on trends in educational inequality has focused chiefly on changing gaps in educational attainment by family income or parental occupation. In contrast, this contribution provides the first assessment of trends in educational attainment by family wealth and suggests that we should be at least as concerned about growing wealth gaps in education. Despite overall growth in educational attainment and some signs of decreasing wealth gaps in high school attainment and college access, I find a large and rapidly increasing wealth gap in college attainment between cohorts born in the 1970s and 1980s, respectively. This growing wealth gap in higher educational attainment co-occurred with a rise in inequality in children’s wealth backgrounds, although the analyses also suggest that the latter does not fully account for the former. Nevertheless, the results reported here raise concerns about the distribution of educational opportunity among today’s children who grow up in a context of particularly extreme wealth inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Fabian T. Pfeffer, 2018. "Growing Wealth Gaps in Education," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 55(3), pages 1033-1068, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:demogr:v:55:y:2018:i:3:d:10.1007_s13524-018-0666-7
    DOI: 10.1007/s13524-018-0666-7
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    19. Philipp M. Lersch & Emanuela Struffolino & Agnese Vitali, 2022. "Wealth in Couples: Introduction to the Special Issue," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 38(4), pages 623-641, October.
    20. Kapelle, Nicole & Frémeaux, Nicolas & Lersch, Philipp M. & Leturcq, Marion, 2024. "The Cohabitation Wealth Premium in Context: Comparing France and Eastern and Western Germany," SocArXiv uz74e, Center for Open Science.
    21. Miriam Rehm & Alyssa Schneebaum & Barbara Schuster, 2022. "Intra-Couple Wealth Inequality: What’s Socio-Demographics Got to Do with it?," European Journal of Population, Springer;European Association for Population Studies, vol. 38(4), pages 681-720, October.
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