Public Aid and the Performance of Born Globals

Abstract

We study the intergenerational income mobility of individuals by directly comparing, for the first time in France, the rank of young adults between the ages of 27 and 30 on the income ladder with that of their parents, based on administrative data from the Échantillon démogra phique permanent (EDP, INSEE's demographic panel sample). The rank-rank correlation is 0.25 at age 29. Twelve per cent of the young people born to the poorest 20% of parents climb up the income ladder to the top 20%: this upward mobility rate is higher in France than in the United States and Italy, but lower than in the Nordic countries. Upward mobility is stronger the higher the parents' capital incomes and diploma, when parents are immigrants, are geographically mobile, or were living in Île-de-France when their offspring reached the age of majority. Conversely, being female, having lived in a single-parent family or in the Hauts-de-France region, or having parents who are manual workers has a negative impact on upward mobility.