How large do second-generation migrants and natives differ in terms of human capital accumulation and why? Empirical evidence for France

This paper analyses the differences in the determinants and patterns of the accumulation of human capital for second-generation immigrants relatively to natives for the French case. We use the Training and Occupational Skills survey to conduct our econometric analysis, where we distinguish the natives, the second-generation immigrants from ‘North Africa’, ‘Southern Europe’, ‘Northern and Western Europe’ and ‘Eastern Europe’ origins. We don’t observe striking differences in the determinants between the second-generation immigrants as a whole and the natives. Moreover, the ‘second-generation immigrants’ group is a heterogeneous one. The significant determinants as well as the magnitude of the impact of these determinants substantially differ between the natives and the two main considered origins. There seems to be a lower ‘determinism’ through parental education for the ‘Southern Europe’ and ‘Northern and Western Europe’ origins than for the ‘North Africa’ and Eastern Europe origins, but differences in intergenerational correlations of education could be explained by parental transmission of education and/or by selection effects of the migrants. The Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition shows that parental endowments in education account for a significant part of the mean education differences according to the origin while some others factors (individual characteristics) are also relevant to explain these differences. But we find evidence for significant differences in parental transmissions of education only for the ‘North Africa’-natives pair.