Publication

Intergenerational Income Mobility in France: A Comparative and Geographic Analysis

Journal of Public Economics (2023), with Gustave Kenedi

We provide new estimates of intergenerational income mobility in France for children born in the 1970s using rich administrative data. Since parents’ incomes are not observed, we employ a two-sample two-stage least squares estimation. We show, using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, that this method slightly underestimates rank-based measures of intergenerational persistence. Our results suggest that France is characterized by a strong persistence relative to other developed countries. 9.7% of children born to…

Working papers

Intergenerational mobility of immigrants in 15 destination countries

NBER Working Paper, with 37 co-authors, R&R at American Economic Review
Coordination: Leah Boustan and Mathias Fjællegaard Jensen

We estimate intergenerational mobility of immigrants and their children in fifteen receiving countries. We document large income gaps for first-generation immigrants that diminish in the second generation. Around half of the second-generation gap can be explained by differences in parental income, with the remainder due to differential rates of absolute mobility. The daughters of immigrants enjoy higher absolute mobility than daughters of locals in most destinations, while immigrant sons primarily enjoy this…

Inherited Inequality in Latin America

Stone Center Working Paper (2025), with Francisco H. G. Ferreira, Paolo Brunori, Guido Neidhöfer, and Pedro Salas-Rojo

This chapter argues that relative measures of intergenerational mobility and inequality of opportunity are closely related ways of quantifying the inheritability of inequality. We review both literatures for Latin America, looking both at income and educational persistence. We document very high levels of intergenerational persistence and inequality of opportunity for education, with inherited characteristics predicting 29% to 52% of the current-generation variance in years of schooling. Inherited circumstances…

To Become or Not to Become French: Conscription, Citizenship, and Labor Market Integration

WIL Working Paper (2023), with Yajna Govind

We examine how changing the costs of acquiring citizenship translates into naturalization decisions for second-generation immigrants, and the effect of naturalization on their labor market outcomes. We exploit the abolition of mandatory military service in France as an exogenous reduction in the cost of citizenship for men. In line with the predictions of our theoretical framework, we find that the reform induced a jump in male naturalization rates, entirely driven by European Union citizens. Using a Synthetic…

Work in progress

Intergenerational Income Mobility Across Origins in France: The Role of Residential Segregation

Work in Progress

I investigate the differences in intergenerational mobility between children born in France to native versus immigrant parents. For most origin groups, and systematically among daughters, income gaps with children of natives disappear when comparing individuals whose parents had the same income. Still, a gap persists for sons of immigrants from North Africa, despite higher rates of college graduation at the lower end of the parents’ income distribution. The gap is lower among positive-income earners, and…