Whether elite universities expand or limit upward mobility in the long run depends on how they shape the intergenerational transmission of educational and social outcomes. We combine five decades of linked data on social and educational trajectories for parents and children in Chile with a...

Do elite colleges help talented students join the social elite, or help incumbent elites retain their positions? We combine intergenerationally-linked data from Chile with a regression discontinuity design to show that, looking across generations, elite colleges do both. Lower-status individuals...