IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aecrev/v115y2025i12p4369-4403.html

First-Generation Elite: The Role of School Social Networks

Author

Listed:
  • Sarah Cattan
  • Kjell G. Salvanes
  • Emma Tominey

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Sarah Cattan & Kjell G. Salvanes & Emma Tominey, 2025. "First-Generation Elite: The Role of School Social Networks," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 115(12), pages 4369-4403, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:115:y:2025:i:12:p:4369-4403
    DOI: 10.1257/aer.20230582
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/aer.20230582
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/materials/24284
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/materials/24285
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/aer.20230582?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Moroni, Gloria & Nicoletti, Cheti & Salvanes, Kjell Gunnar & Tominey, Emma, 2025. "Gender equality through marriage," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 20/2025, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    2. Raj Chetty & Rebecca Diamond & Thomas B. Foster & Lawrence F. Katz & Sonya Porter & Matthew Staiger & Laura Tach, 2026. "Creating High-Opportunity Neighborhoods: Evidence from the HOPE VI Program," NBER Working Papers 34720, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Fergusson Leopoldo & Natalia Garbiras-Díaz & Michael Weintraub, 2026. "Accents as Capital," Documentos CEDE 2026-1, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:115:y:2025:i:12:p:4369-4403. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.