The Scope for Promoting Equal Opportunity in Education: Evidence from the Kibbutz

We compare the link between parents’ schooling and their children’s college-entrance test scores in Israeli kibbutzim (communal villages) and in the general population. Though kibbutzim are committed to an egalitarian ethos and provide all kibbutz children with similar need-based access to educational resources, we still find a substantial link between kibbutz parents’ schooling and their children’s test scores—roughly three-fifths its size in the general population. This confirms the importance of non-pecuniary channels of parental influence on education and provides an informative reference point on the practical scope for reducing origin dependence in education through public policy.