Skill Premia and Intergenerational Education Mobility: The French Case

Abstract

In the case of France, we analyse the changes in the wage value of each education level and the impact of parents’ education and income upon the education attainment of children, sons and daughters. We find a critical decline in the skill premium of the Baccalauréat (‘bac’) in relation to the lowest educational level, and an increase in the skill premia of higher education degrees in relation to the bac, which is however not large enough to erase the decrease in all the skill premia relative to the lowest education. We also find a significant rise in the impact of family backgrounds upon education from 1993 to 2003, i.e., a decrease in intergenerational education mobility, which primarily derives from higher impact of parental incomes. Finally, the gender wage gap is particularly large for the lowest and the highest education degrees, and intergenerational persistence is greater for sons than for daughters.

Keywords: Family backgrounds, Intergenerational education mobility, Skill premium

JEL Classification: I2, J24, J31