Professor of Economics and International and Public Affairs John Friedman recently co-authored a paper titled "Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges."
The introduction of John Friedman's latest paper states: "Leadership positions in the United States are held disproportionately by graduates of a group of 12 highly selective, private “Ivy-Plus” colleges—the eight colleges in the Ivy League, the University of Chicago, Duke, MIT, and Stanford. Less than one percent of Americans attend these 12 colleges, yet they account for 15% of those in the top 0.1% of the income distribution, a quarter of U.S. Senators, half of all Rhodes scholars, and three-fourths of Supreme Court justices appointed in the last half-century."
"Furthermore, the students who attend Ivy-Plus institutions disproportionately come from high-income backgrounds themselves: just 10% of students scoring at the 99th percentile on the SAT/ACT from middle-class families attend an Ivy-Plus college, compared with 40% of similarly high-scoring students from families in the top 1 percent of the income distribution."