Research
Research
Publications
Intergenerational Income Mobility in France:
A Comparative and Geographic Analysis
With Gustave Kenedi
Journal of Public Economics, 2023
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 intergenerational persistence with rank-based estimators. Our results suggest France is characterized by a strong persistence relative to other developed countries. 9.7% of children born to parents in the bottom 20% reach the top 20% in adulthood, four times less than children from the top 20%. We uncover substantial spatial variations in intergenerational mobility across departments, and a positive relationship between geographic mobility and intergenerational upward mobility. The expected income rank of individuals from the bottom of the parent income distribution who moved towards high-income departments is around the same as the expected income rank of individuals from the 75th percentile who stayed in their childhood department.
Working papers
To become or not to become French:
Conscription, naturalization, and labor market integration
With Yajna Govind - Working Paper 2023
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. We find that the reform induced a jump in male naturalization rates, entirely driven by European Union citizens. Using a Synthetic Difference-in-Differences, we show that the probability of employment for EU males consequently increased by 2 percentage points, mainly through a reduction in inactivity rather than unemployment. We provide suggestive evidence that this effect is mainly driven by an increase in public-sector employment and a reduction in self-employment, and is associated with an enhanced sense of belonging.
Work in progress
Inequality of opportunity across origins in France: The role of residential segregation
If immigrants have lower incomes than natives, a high intergenerational income persistence would lead second-generation immigrants to earn also less than children of natives. I quantify the remaining gap between children of immigrants and natives with similar parental backgrounds, and I estimate the effect of residential segregation on this conditional gap. Using administrative French data, I find that second-generation immigrants from North Africa tend to earn less than children of natives, and that this gap persists when comparing individuals with the same parental socio-economic status. I use an index capturing how waterways divide spatially areas individuals grew up in to instrument for residential segregation. Results show that residential segregation has a negative impact on children’s conditional expected income rank, which is stronger for children of immigrants than for children of natives, hence contributing to the conditional income gap.