College, cognitive ability, and socioeconomic disadvantage: policy lessons from the U.K. in 1960–2004

Publication type

Journal Article

Authors

Publication date

August 7, 2026

Summary:

University access has significantly expanded in OECD countries, and further growth figures prominently in political agendas. We study possible consequences of historical and future expansions in a stochastic, general equilibrium Roy model where tertiary educational attainment is determined by cognitive ability and socioeconomic disadvantage. In our analysis, individual productivity depends not only on education but also directly on cognitive ability. The expansion of university access in the U.K. that started in the 1960s provides an ideal case study to draw lessons for the future. We find that this expansion led to the selection into college of progressively less talented students from advantaged backgrounds. Appropriate counterfactual policies existed that would have achieved the dual goal of increasing college graduates’ cognitive ability while improving tertiary education opportunities for the disadvantaged.

Published in

Review of Economic Studies

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1093/restud/rdag072

ISSN

00346527

Subjects

Notes

Online Early

© The Author(s) 2026. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Review of Economic Studies Limited.

Open Access

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial re-use, please contact reprints@oup.com for reprints and translation rights for reprints. All other permissions can be obtained through our RightsLink service via the Permissions link on the article page on our site—for further information please contact journals.permissions@oup.com.

#589130

---

Related Publications

• College education, intelligence, and disadvantage: policy lessons from the UK in 1960-2004

  1. Andrea Ichino
  2. Aldo Rustichini
  3. Giulio Zanella

  Research Paper
  June 23, 2022