Professor Emma Tominey, The University of York

"First Generation Elite: The Role of School Social Networks"
Wednesday, 17 April 2024. 15:00-16:30
Room 281, Adam Smith Business School & PGT Hub

Abstract

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 peer effect on enrolment in elite programmes and disentangle underlying mechanisms. Exploiting a lottery in the assessment system, a causal mediation analysis shows the overall positive peer effect reflects a positive effect on application behaviour (conditional on GPA), which dominates a negative effect on student GPA. We consider implications for income mobility finding that encouraging further mixing between elite and non-elite students in high school could improve mobility across the whole distribution.

Bio

Emma is an applied microeconomist interested in inequalities and human capital, often using big data combined with quasi-experimental methods.

For further information, please contact business-school-research@glasgow.ac.uk

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First published: 8 April 2024

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