Previous research has shown that the intergenerational transmission of advantage disappears once individuals obtain a bachelor’s degree. This is known as the equalization thesis: the ‘meritocratic power’ of a college degree. This paper revisits the question of origin-destination association among college graduates. We improve on earlier studies by using three large sample (40,000+) of the National Survey of College Graduates, consisting of birth cohorts between 1938 and 1985. Contrary to the equalization thesis, we find that parental education and parental income are associated with substantially higher post-college incomes. An individual’s own attainment only partially mediates the association through the type of college attended, but not through attaining an advanced degree. The consistency of the origin-destination estimates across three decades supports a reproduction thesis of mobility.

先前的研究表明，一旦个人获得了学士学位，优势的代际传递就消失了。这就是所谓的均等论点：大学学位的“精英能力”。本文重新探讨了大学毕业生中的原籍地与目的地的关联问题。我们通过使用三个大样本（40,000份以上）的全国大学毕业生调查（其中包括1938年至1985年之间的出生队列）对先前的研究进行了改进。与均等化论证相反，我们发现，父母的教育程度和父母的收入与较高的收入水平相关。大学后的收入。个人的学历只是通过就读大学的类型而不是通过获得高等学位来部分地介导协会。