Patterns of educational attainment and employment of first and second generation immigrants in France

This paper focuses on intergenerational educational mobility in France using the "Generation 92" survey respectively for native children, first and second generation of immigrants. Drawing on ordered Probit models for educational attainment, we show that a high level of parental education has differentiated impact on the child education among the three groups depending on the parental origin country and child gender. We find a higher intergenerational correlation in education for natives than for the first generation, but an intermediate level for the second generation which suggests a possible convergence over successive generations. In France, children of African parents are less likely to be employed than natives. Results from a non-linear decomposition indicate that this gap mainly stems from differences in individual characteristics between natives and children of immigrants. Finally, the first and second generations of African immigrants consider more frequently their school track as rather difficult.