Elite Universities and the Intergenerational Transmission of Human and Social Capital
Abstract
Do elite colleges help talented students from modest backgrounds join the social elite,or help incumbent elites retain their positions? We combine five decades of linked data on parents and children in Chile with a regression discontinuity design to show that, in the long run, elite colleges in fact do both. We first document intertwined intergenerational persistence in academic achievement and social status. Mean child rank on college admissions exams is linear in parent rank, with higher intercepts and flatter slopes for children whose parents attend a set of high-status, high-tuition private high schools. At the same time, children of high-status parents are more likely to attend high-status high schools and enroll in elite college degree programs, with gaps increasing in parents’ exam rank. We then show that parents’ access to elite colleges raises child social capital, but not human capital. Children of lower-status parents just above the threshold for admission to elite degree programs score no better on college entrance exams than children of parents just below but are 21% more likely to attend a high-status private high school. Social and spousal links to high-status college peers are the key mechanism. Combining our descriptive and quasi-experimental estimates in a VAR model of social and academic mobility shows that elite universities raise both the intergenerational correlation between parent and child social capital and the cross-sectional correlation between social and human capital. Elite universities thus reduce social capital mobility but shift its distribution along meritocratic lines, towards academic high-achievers.