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...

Intergenerational persistence in studying for elite education is high across the world. We study the role that exposure to high school peers from elite educated families (‘elite peers’) plays in driving such a phenomenon in Norway. Using register data on ten cohorts of high school students...

We use newly linked UK administrative to estimate absolute income mobility for children born in England in the 1980s. We find huge differences across the country, with a strong North-South gradient. Children from low-income families who grew up in the lowest mobility areas - overwhelmingly in...

Poor families have more children and transfer less resources to them. This suggests that family decisions about fertility and transfers dampen intergenerational mobility. To evaluate the quantitative importance of this mechanism, we extend the standard heterogeneous agent life cycle model with...

How strong is the transmission of socio-economic status across generations in Latin America? To answer this question, we first review the empirical literature on intergenerational mobility and inequality of opportunity for the region, summarizing results for both income and educational outcomes....

We provide novel evidence of the impact of coresidence bias on a large set of indicators of intergenerational mobility in education. We begin re-examining a recent claim that the correlation coefficient is less biased than the regression coefficient. Then, we expand our analysis to show that...

This paper estimates intergenerational mobility in education using data from 91 censuses in 24 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean spanning over half a century. It measures upward mobility as the likelihood that individuals will complete one educational stage more than their parents...

Higher education policy potentially has an important role in improving intergenerational income mobility. We use rich administrative data to estimate a novel two-sided matching model of sorting into field and institution within higher education. We use it to simulate a wide set of policies aimed...