Growing Wealth Gaps in Education
Open accessAbstract
Prior research on trends in educational inequality has focused chiefly on changing gaps in educational attainment by family income or parental occupation. In contrast, this contribution provides the first assessment of trends in educational attainment by family wealth and suggests that we should be at least as concerned about growing wealth gaps in education. Despite overall growth in educational attainment and some signs of decreasing wealth gaps in high school attainment and college access, I find a large and rapidly increasing wealth gap in college attainment between cohorts born in the 1970s and 1980s, respectively. This growing wealth gap in higher educational attainment co-occurred with a rise in inequality in children’s wealth backgrounds, although the analyses also suggest that the latter does not fully account for the former. Nevertheless, the results reported here raise concerns about the distribution of educational opportunity among today’s children who grow up in a context of particularly extreme wealth inequality.
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For any given family, regardless of annual household earnings, the stock of liquid capital on hand can fund students' educational and living expenses, fostering success in higher education.
“For any given family, regardless of annual household earnings, the stock of capital on hand can fund students' educational and living expenses, in turn fostering success in higher education (Pfeffer, 2018).”
From Wealth, Race, and Under-Addressed Financial Need in Federal Student Aid Policy (2025) · cites this paper as Pfeffer, 2018
The Findings section (page unavailable) reports that family wealth predicts college graduation and persistence independently of income. The Background section says wealth may ease constraints created by tuition and board costs, but the paper measures total net worth, not specifically liquid capital. The Conclusion also states that the study does not establish the causal pathway from wealth to educational success. (LLM, conf=0.86)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredLow wealth hurts individuals' chances of attending and completing college.
“Low wealth hurts individuals' chances of attending and completing college (Hotz etal.,2023; Jez, 2014; Pfeffer, 2018).”
From Wealth, Race, and Under-Addressed Financial Need in Federal Student Aid Policy (2025) · cites this paper as Pfeffer, 2018
The Findings and Conclusion report wealth gaps in college access and persistence, with greater college persistence among students from the wealthiest families. But the Conclusion explicitly says the study does not establish causality, so it supports an association rather than the claim that low wealth itself hurts students’ chances. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredFamily wealth is a distinct form of economic advantage that can shape higher education outcomes, above and beyond family income.
“Family wealth is a distinct form of economic advantage that can shape higher education outcomes, above and beyond family income (Conley, 2001; Pfeffer, 2018).”
From Wealth, Race, and Under-Addressed Financial Need in Federal Student Aid Policy (2025) · cites this paper as Pfeffer, 2018
Family wealth provides a vital, and vastly unequal, form of financial support for college.
“family wealth provides a vital, and vastly unequal, form of financial support for college (Conley, 2001; Pfeffer, 2018).”
From Wealth, Race, and Under-Addressed Financial Need in Federal Student Aid Policy (2025) · cites this paper as Pfeffer, 2018
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- Dynarski S 2001 Loans, liquidity and schooling decisions Kennedy School of Government Working Paper Cambridge, MA Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government
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Wealth, Race, and Under-Addressed Financial Need in Federal Student Aid Policy
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“Family wealth is a distinct form of economic advantage that can shape higher education outcomes, above and beyond family income (Conley, 2001; Pfeffer, 2018).”
Influential
- Authors
- Pfeffer, F. T.
- Affiliations
- University of Michigan (US)
- Corresponding author
- Pfeffer, Fabian T.
- ORCID
- Pfeffer, Fabian T.
- Venue
- Demography
- Publisher
- Duke University Press
- Published
- 2018-03-27
- Volume
- 55
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 1033-1068
- ISSN
- 0070-3370 (ISSN-L)
- 1533-7790
- PMC
- PMC5993612
- OpenAlex
- W2794987605
- Cited by
- 178
- References
- 114
- Citations by year
- 2026: 15 · 2025: 26 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 31 · 2022: 27 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 1 · 2016: 1
- FWCI
- 29.58
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Demography (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Spencer Foundation
- National Institutes of Health
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2CHD041028, R01HD069609)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Intergenerational and Educational Inequality Studies
- Social Sciences › Education › School Choice and Performance
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Cultural Dynamics
- Keywords
- educational inequality, wealth gap, family wealth, educational attainment, college attainment, college access, intergenerational wealth transfer, wealth inequality, educational opportunities, cohort trends
- MeSH terms
- Academic Success, Educational Status, Family, Humans, Income, Socioeconomic Factors, Universities
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
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