Unequal access to higher education based on parental income: evidence from France

In this paper, we provide new stylized facts on inequalities in access to higher education by parental income in France. On average, an increase of 10 percentile ranks in the parental income distribution is associated with a 5.8 percentage point (p.p.) increase in the proportion of children accessing higher education-4.2 p.p. in the bottom half of the income distribution and 9.3 p.p. in the top half-. This overall level of inequality is surprisingly close to that observed in the United States. We then document how these inequalities in access to higher education by parental income combine with inequalities related to parental occupation or degree. Finally, we assess the redistributivity of public spending on higher education and more generally of all public spending on young adults and their parents, and present a new accounting method to take into account the tax contribution of parents in our redistributivity analysis.