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Like Father, Like Child: Intergenerational Mobility in the French Grandes Écoles throughout the 20 th Century

Author

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  • Stéphane Benveniste

    (AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, INED - Institut national d'études démographiques)

Abstract
While the educational expansion of the 20 th century promoted social mobility overall, the top of the social hierarchy may have remained privileged. This paper examines the evolution of intergenerational mobility in admissions to the French elite colleges-the Grandes Écoles (GE)-over more than a century. Admission to these institutions is subject to partially anonymous competitive examinations, and their degrees are the ticket to top positions in the public and private sectors. In the growing literature measuring intergenerational mobility through surnames, I design a novel method and apply it to a self-collected dataset on all 285,286 graduates from ten of the most prestigious Grandes Écoles between 1886 and 2015. Principally, I find that children of male GE graduates were highly over-represented in the top colleges throughout the 20 th century. Importantly, unlike previous studies exploiting fathers' socio-professional categories, I find a stable low level of intergenerational mobility for all cohorts born since 1916: chances of GE admission for children of GE graduates were approximately 80 times higher than for the rest of the population.

Suggested Citation

  • Stéphane Benveniste, 2023. "Like Father, Like Child: Intergenerational Mobility in the French Grandes Écoles throughout the 20 th Century," Working Papers hal-04221167, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-04221167
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://amu.hal.science/hal-04221167
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Camille Remigereau & Clara Schäper, 2024. "The Impact of Student Aid Eligibility on Higher Education Applications," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 2104, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    2. Stéphane Benveniste, 2024. "Political and Business Dynasties: a Social Gradient in Returns to Elite Education," AMSE Working Papers 2410, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    I23; N34 Intergenerational mobility; Intergenerational mobility; Higher education; Elites; Grandes Écoles; Historical economics; JEL Classification: J62 I23 N34 Intergenerational mobility Higher education Elites Grandes Écoles Historical economics; JEL Classification: J62;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion
    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • N34 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: 1913-

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