This study investigates how income inequality shapes the role of economic capital and cultural capital in students’ academic performance. By analyzing a multilevel dataset of 72 countries (economies), Professor Yuxiao Wu and his research team find that: (1) economic capital plays a more important role in promoting adolescents’ academic achievement in unequal societies than equal ones, while the effects of cultural capital decrease with the increase of inequality; (2) In societies with lower levels of inequality, cultural capital benefits more to students with lower-economic capital, or equally affect students with different economic capital; By contrast, cultural capital’s effect tends to be stronger for students with high-economic capital in more unequal societies. The findings contribute to understanding how social context shapes the processes of intergenerational reproduction from a comparative perspective