A multi-agent description of the influence of higher education on social stratification

TL;DR

This paper presents a kinetic multi-agent model linking higher education to social stratification, demonstrating how education influences social mobility and inequality through coupled knowledge and social status dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel coupled kinetic model that integrates knowledge formation with social climbing, accounting for the mutual influence of education and social ranking.

Findings

Education reduces social inequalities in simulations.

Higher education promotes social mobility.

Knowledge and social status mutually influence each other.

Abstract

We introduce and discuss a system of one-dimensional kinetic equations describing the influence of higher education in the social stratification of a multi-agent society. The system is obtained by coupling a model for knowledge formation with a kinetic description of the social climbing in which the parameters characterizing the elementary interactions leading to the formation of a social elite are assumed to depend on the degree of knowledge/education of the agents. In addition, we discuss the case in which the education level of an individual is function of the position occupied in the social ranking. With this last assumption we obtain a fully coupled model in which knowledge and social status influence each other. In the last part, we provide several numerical experiments highlighting the role of education in reducing social inequalities and in promoting social mobility.