Skill premia and intergenerational education mobility: The French case

• Changes in returns to education and intergenerational education mobility in France.
• Critical decline in the return to the Baccalauréat (bac) from 1977 to 2003.
• Increase in the return to higher education in relation to the bac from 1977 to 2003.
• Significant decrease in intergenerational education mobility from 1993 to 2003.
• V-shaped gender wage gap in 2003.

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.