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We study how economic conditions at the time of choosing post-compulsory educa-
tion affect intergenerational mobility. Exploiting variation in the unemployment rate
in individuals' birthplace at age 16 across 96 French d´ epartements and 22 cohorts, we
find that cohorts deciding on post-compulsory education in bad economic times are
more educationally mobile – their level of education is less related to having a white
collar father. We find that these cohorts are also more occupationally mobile – blue
collar children are relatively more likely to become white collar when adult; and that
a large fraction of this effect is explained by differences in educational attainment.
Using a Two-Sample 2SLS approach, we show that accounting for differential spatial
mobility between birth and age 16 by parental background results in stronger relative
counter-cyclicality of long-run schooling attainment for children of blue collar fathers
and occupational mobility. We provide auxiliary evidence showing that individuals
experiencing local high unemployment at age 16 are more likely to be in training at
age 17 and that this effect is significantly stronger for children of blue collar workers.
Finally, we develop a conceptual framework that will allow us to decompose the esti-
mated effects into differences in the effect of the cycle and in the density of students
at the margin by parental background.
