Opportunity Engines: Middle-Class Mobility in Higher Education

Abstract

Inequality in the United States has been rising in recent decades, while intergenerational mobility remains low. This means that absolute mobility—the extent to which children are economically better off than their parents—is declining, and intergenerational inequality is increasingly entrenched. A long literature suggests large returns to attending college and points to the importance of higher education for intergenerational mobility. Recent work by Opportunity Insights explores in more detail the role that different colleges play in promoting upward mobility, pointing to significant differences across colleges in the extent to which they enroll students from low-income families who have high earnings as adults. Here, the authors use the data produced by Opportunity Insights to focus specifically on students from middle-class families to understand patterns of attendance and upward mobility for the middle class.