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A Comprehensive Assessment of Inequality of Opportunity in Earnings: Evidence from the French Permanent Demographic Sample

Geoffrey Teyssier, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)
Laurent Toulemon, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

This paper uses a unique but underused dataset called Echantillon Démographique Permanent (EDP) to obtain highly accurate measures of inequality of opportunity in France. The EDP tracks French residents born between October 1st and 4th across census and various administrative data dating backing to the late 1960s. We detect individuals born between 1953 and 1970 during their childhood in the 1968, 1975 and 1982 censuses to obtain a wealth of information about their social background and other predetermined circumstances, namely: education and occupation of each parent, familial composition, migratory origin, place of residence and sex. We detect the same individuals who are employed once aged between 25 and 40 in the Panel DADS, which employers file every two years. These two pieces of data are then used to compute how much of the variation in earnings is explained by the above-mentioned rich set of circumstances. The ensuing inequality of opportunity is computed by cohorts of 7 to 8 years long comprising approximately 50,000 adults each. We study its evolution across cohorts vs age groups over the period 1978-2010. The relative importance of each circumstance is also analyzed, so as the mitigating role of education and unemployment in shaping earning inequality.

Keywords: Economic analysis, Human capital and labour markets, Linked data sets, Longitudinal studies

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  Presented in Session 116. Inequalities, Health and Wellbeing