Mobility Report Cards: The Role of Colleges in Intergenerational Mobility
Level 3 - non-randomized controlled study
Level 3 by design analogy (retrospective population cohort study; non-clinical).
OpenAlex W2739137144 · doi:10.3386/w23618
What was done
Characterized intergenerational income mobility across US colleges using administrative records for over 30 million college students from 1999 to 2013, linking parental income distributions to adult student earnings across individual institutions.
What was found
Students from families in the top 1% were 77 times more likely to attend an Ivy League college than students from the bottom income quintile. Conditional on attending a given college, low- and high-income students had similar post-college earnings outcomes. Upward mobility rates (moving from the bottom to the top income quintile) varied substantially across institutions, peaking at mid-tier public universities such as the City University of New York and California State colleges, whereas upper-tail mobility (bottom quintile to top 1%) was highest at elite institutions. Between 2000 and 2011, the proportion of low-income students remained flat at elite private colleges and declined sharply at the mid-tier institutions with the highest upward mobility rates.
Why it matters
It establishes comprehensive institutional benchmarks of access and upward mobility across the entire US higher education sector, highlighting which colleges function as engines of economic mobility.
Limits
The study is purely descriptive and does not identify the causal impact of attending specific colleges versus selection bias or unobserved student characteristics. Specific numerical estimates for overall mobility rates and exact decline percentages are not provided in the abstract.
Cited by
- supports Children from households in the top 1% of income are 77 times more likely to gain admission to elite universities than lower-income students.