Who Moves Up the Income Ladder Relative to their Parents? An Analysis of Intergenerational Income Mobility in France

We study intergenerational income mobility in France using tax data from a large panel. We measure the rank of parents in their income distribution and compare it directly for the first time with the rank of their children around age 28.

The rank-rank correlation is 0.24. According to this indicator, intergenerational mobility is higher in France than in the United States, but lower than in the Scandinavian countries. Children born to parents in the bottom 20% of their income distribution are three times more likely to be among the top 20 % as adults than those from poorest families, and so inequality is partially transmitted to the next generation. However, for the same level of parental income, children's incomes vary greatly when they are young adults. In 2018, the rate of upward mobility from the bottom 20 % to the top 20 % is 12 %. Upward mobility is stronger the higher the parents' capital income and education, when parents are immigrants, are more geographically mobile, or live in the Île-de-France region when their children become adults. Conversely, being a woman, having lived in a single-parent family, having parents who are manual workers, or having lived in the Hauts-de-France region are all factors that have a negative impact on upward mobility.