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Rising Educational Attainment and Opportunity Equalization: Evidence from France

Inequality, Redistribution and Mobility

ISBN: 978-1-80043-040-2, eISBN: 978-1-80043-039-6

Publication date: 26 November 2020

Abstract

Educational policies are widely recognized as the means par excellence to equalize opportunities among children with different social and family backgrounds and to promote intergenerational mobility. In this chapter, we focus on the French case and we apply the opportunity equalization criterion proposed by Andreoli, Havnes, and Lefranc (2019) for evaluating the effect of rising compulsory schooling requirements in secondary education. Our results show that such education expansion has a limited redistributive effect on students’ earnings distribution. Nonetheless, we provide evidence of opportunity equalization among groups of students defined by family background circumstances.

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Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

This research received financial support from the French National Agency for Research under the project The Measurement of Ordinal and Multidimensional Inequalities (grant ANR-16-CE41-0005-01), the Luxembourg Fonds National de la Recherche (IMCHILD grant INTER/NORFACE/16/11333934) and the NORFACE Joint Research Programme on Dynamics of Inequality Across the Life-course (EC Horizon 2020 grant 724363). This research is also part of the project MOBILIFE (grant RBVR-17KFHX) supported by the University of Verona. The comments of an anonymous reviewer helped improving the manuscript. The usual disclaimer applies.

Citation

Andreoli, F., Lefranc, A. and Prete, V. (2020), "Rising Educational Attainment and Opportunity Equalization: Evidence from France", Rodríguez, J.G. and Bishop, J.A. (Ed.) Inequality, Redistribution and Mobility (Research on Economic Inequality, Vol. 28), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 123-149. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1049-258520200000028005

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Emerald Publishing Limited

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