Intergenerational Mobility and Social Fluidity in France over Birth Cohorts and Across Age

Using the 1970, 1977, 1985, 1993, and 2003 Formation et Qualification Professionnelle (INSEE) surveys, this chapter analyzes how intergenerational social mobility and social fluidity have evolved in France for men and women born between 1906 and 1973. It demonstrates that the statistical association between class of origin and class of destination has become weaker in recent cohorts than in older ones, and also that the same association diminishes with age, i.e., along the occupational career. It demonstrates that change in education has played a key role in the process of increasing social fluidity. In the 1945–54 cohort, the reduction in inequality of educational opportunity is the main factor and the educational expansion is the secondary factor for explaining the reduction of the association between class of origin and class of destination, but the relative importance of these two factors is reversed in the 1955–64 and 1965–73 cohorts.