MEURS Dominique

This thesis explores the extent to which imperfect information and the prevalence of stereotypes act as barriers to high school students' academic success and their pursuit of higher education. The work conducted in this thesis is organized around three objectives. The first is to document the existence of such barriers in the French context. Using survey data as well as unpublished administrative data, this work takes stock of the prevalence of gender stereotypes and those associated with science among high school students and teachers of mathematics in the final year of science school (Chapters 1 and 3). The second objective is to measure the impact of these barriers on students' academic performance and on their choice of career path and enrollment in higher education. In Chapter 3, we study the influence of gendered academic assessments of mathematics teachers on these dimensions for science high school seniors. The final objective of this thesis is to evaluate measures to combat these barriers. Chapter 2 evaluates the Active Orientation policy implemented between 2009 and 2017, which aimed to remedy the lack of information students had when formulating their orientation wishes. Chapter 1 estimates the impact of the For Girls in Science program, a short classroom intervention by a female scientist, which aims to deconstruct stereotypes and spark interest in science careers among students, especially young high school girls.

In this article we estimate the relative contributions to the gender pension gap of career duration and income earned at different points along the pension income distribution, as well as the role played by minimum pensions and other partly or wholly non-contributory policies in reducing this gap. Our research covers all retirees in France in 2012 employed in the public or private sector at least once in their lifetimes. We first highlight that at every point in the distribution, the gender pension gap is wider for private sector retirees than for those in the public sector. This is because public sector careers are less fragmented, and because calculation of the public sector reference wage does not penalize career interruptions so heavily. This relative advantage of women in the public sector is probably an additional factor explaining their over-representation in this sector. Applying the decomposition method proposed by Firpo, Fortin and Lemieux (2007, 2009), we show that composition differences in the gender pension gap are essentially due to differences in contribution periods and wages, with a smaller effect of career duration in the public sector than in the private. In the first deciles, the gap can be attributed largely to differences in career duration. This effect gradually weakens, and differences in the reference wage become the main explanation. We also show that minimum contributory pensions play an extremely important role in limiting the gender pension gap in the first deciles, essentially in the private sector. Last, we show that in all cases the unexplained share of the pension gap is substantial only at the bottom of the distribution and, to a lesser extent, in the top decile. The unexplained share is generally smaller than the explained one, and favours men.

A pioneer in the consecration of equality between men and women, Tunisia has been an exception in the Arab world since its independence in 1956. However, despite legislation that promotes equality, women employees are underrepresented in the management of the civil service, even though they are as numerous and educated as their male counterparts. The current political upheaval has had a significant impact on women's working lives, including the distribution of wages in the labor market and recruitment patterns, and, in turn, on career opportunities and access to higher-paying jobs. To study the situation of women and the wage gap in the public and private sectors, our approach is essentially empirical. Two models are applied to the 2011 and 2015 national employment surveys in order to calculate the wage gap and provide some answers as to which sector is the most discriminating. Thus, notwithstanding the undeniable achievements, the applicability of equality - between women and men in the labor market - still remains incomplete.

The population of most countries is aging and the main caregivers are children. Policy makers are also promoting the provision of care by relatives to delay institutionalization of the elderly. We study the provision of care by children, how assistance is distributed among them, and its effectiveness in delaying institutionalization of the elderly. The main contributions can be summarized as follows. Retirement policies can have negative consequences for frail people with a high number of assistance needs who require daily attention. Children do not coordinate when deciding what to provide for their parent, and the allocation of the help they provide is then inefficient. The results suggest that children are strategic substitutes, but also that the strategic effect is greater for a sister than a brother. This can be explained theoretically by greater productivity in helping women than men. Policy makers should expect that stimulating informal care may accelerate the admission of elderly people with poor health.

This dissertation aims to explore the link between institutions, gender and politics. It seeks to answer three questions: Can institutions undo gender norms? Would institutions be more egalitarian if they were led by women? Why are women absent from positions of power? The first chapter of this dissertation aims to explore the role of institutions in creating gender norms. The norm studied is that a woman must earn less than her husband. Using, the division of Germany as a natural experiment, we show that East German egalitarian institutions undid gender. After reunification, an East German woman can earn more than her husband without increasing her hours of domestic work, risking divorce or withdrawing from the labor market. In contrast, in West Germany, these behaviors are still observable.The second chapter examines whether institutions would be more egalitarian with women in charge. In particular, we investigate whether female politicians have the same priorities as their male colleagues. The context studied is the French Parliament during the period 2001-2017. By combining text analysis methods with exogenous variations in the gender of politicians, this chapter shows that, relative to their male colleagues, female politicians in the National Assembly are more advocates for women in the population. The issue where gender differences in parliamentary activity are most pronounced is precisely that of gender equality, followed by issues related to children and health. Men are more active on military issues. We show that these differences stem from the individual interests of legislators. Finally, we replicate these results in the Senate by exploiting the introduction of a reform that imposed parity.The third chapter looks at the reasons behind the under-representation of women in positions of power. It seeks to determine whether, in a context where politicians are predominantly men, the "incumbency bonus" in elections reduces the number of women elected. The context studied is that of municipalities of less than 1000 inhabitants in France. We show that, contrary to what one might expect, when politicians are not eligible for re-election, the share of women elected does not increase. This is because it is more difficult for a woman to replace a woman than to replace a man.

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We draw a parallel between changes in the French labour market and the evolution of its study by public statistics and labour economists. Labour economics has taken a significant turn toward empirical analysis based on recent microeconometric developments in the evaluation of public policies. This turn has not been sufficient to make decisive progress in the fight against unemployment or inequalities in the labour market. This begs the question of the difficulties faced by labour economics and the associated statistical approaches to apprehend a moving context, and perhaps also of the insufficient dialogue with public decision makers.

We compare the changes in the French labor market over the last 40 years with the changes in the way it is viewed by official statistics and labor economists. One salient feature is that labor economics has taken an empirical turn by mobilizing the new micro-econometric methods of public policy analysis developed since the 1990s. This turn has not been sufficient to make decisive progress in the fight against unemployment or inequalities in the labor market. In turn, one may wonder about the difficulties of the discipline and its statistical tools in understanding a changing context, but also perhaps about the still insufficient dialogue with public policy makers.

In France, numerous empirical studies have highlighted the existence and extent of discrimination against certain demographic groups on the basis of one or more criteria in a particular market. Most of these studies have focused on discrimination in hiring and in access to housing, based on gender, origin and place of residence. In response to these difficulties, many public policy measures have been put in place to remedy them. However, studies aimed at evaluating them on a rigorous basis remain very rare or non-existent. In this doctoral thesis, we are interested in evaluating the effectiveness of three actions to combat discrimination based on gender, origin and place of residence in the fields of employment and housing. In access to private employment (Chapter 1), we examine whether individual entrepreneurship, encouraged by French President Emmanuel Macron during his November 14, 2017, speech on "Politique de la Ville" in Roubaix, is an effective way to circumvent gender, origin, and place of residence discrimination in the labor market. We are interested in entrepreneurship through business takeovers. In access to public employment (Chapter 2), we are interested in evaluating the new actions for equality and diversity in recruitment implemented within the Ministry of National Education since 2014: through the modification of the rules for constituting juries, the sensitization of juries to discrimination, the modification of recruitment modalities, as well as the professionalization of competitive exams, with a reduction in the number of tests, and a change in their content. This last aspect is the main point of the reform of the system of external competitive examinations for the various categories of the Ministry of National Education. We examine the impact of this reform of the professionalization of competitive examinations on the chances of success for candidates who are potentially discriminated against because of their gender or place of residence, as well as on the biases of evaluation on the part of jury members. In access to housing (Chapter 3), we evaluate the effect of an action aiming to reduce discrimination according to origin by means of a letter sent by the Defender of Rights to real estate agencies with a high risk of discrimination.

This thesis studies the role of migration trajectories to and from metropolitan France in individual life paths. Going beyond the traditional conception of migration as a unidirectional and linear movement, the objective of this thesis is first to improve knowledge of the phenomenon of immigrant remigration in France. By considering France as both an arrival and a departure area, it aims more broadly to renew the approach to migration by comparing different types of migrants that are rarely studied together: immigrants, natives of the French Overseas Departments, foreign-born French, second generations, and natives of the majority population. By combining tax and census data from the Permanent Demographic Sample (1975-1999, 2011-2016), and the Trajectories and Origins survey (2008), this research relies on an original empirical device that makes it possible to explore the place of migratory experiences in individual life paths at various points in the migration process. The comparison between different categories of population reveals the diversity of migration trajectories from metropolitan France, real or envisaged, and their determinants. The combined analysis of these selection processes and of the effects of a stay abroad on professional careers upon return to France provides new insights into the role of migration in the (re)production of social inequalities. Finally, this thesis shows how considering past mobilities and possible future remigrations of immigrants refines our understanding of the mechanisms of socioeconomic integration in the host society.

While the average gender gap in pensions is quite well documented, gender differences in the distribution of pensions have rarely been explored. We show in this paper that pension dispersion is very similar for men and women within the French pension system of a given sector (public or private). Gender differences are less marked among retired civil servants than among former private sector employees. However, the determinants of these inequalities are not the same for men and women. Using a regression-based decomposition of the Gini coefficient, we find that pension dispersion is mainly due to dispersion of the reference wage for all retirees. But for women, pension dispersion is also due to dispersion in contribution periods. We also decompose the Gini coefficient by source of pension to measure the impact of institutional rules (minimum pensions, survivor’s pension) on the extent of pension inequality. Unexpectedly, we find that the impact of minimum pensions is limited, although slightly larger for civil servants than for private-sector employees. Survivor's pension schemes, on the other hand, contribute positively to pension dispersion among retired women.

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We document the educational integration of immigrant children in France and Germany with a focus on the link between family size and educational decisions and distinguishing particularly between first- and second-generation immigrants and between source country groups. First, for immigrant adolescents, we show family-size adjusted convergence to almost native levels of higher education track attendance from the first to the second generation of immigrants. Second, we find that reduced fertility is associated with higher educational outcomes for immigrant children, possibly through a quantity-quality trade-off. Third, we show that between one third and the complete difference in family-size adjusted educational outcomes between immigrants from different source countries or immigrant generations can be explained by parental background. This latter holds true for various immigrant groups in both France and Germany, two major European economies with distinct immigration histories.

We propose an assignment model in which positions along a hierarchy are attributed to individuals depending on their characteristics. Our theoretical framework can be used to study differences in assignment and outcomes across groups and we show how it can motivate decomposition and counterfactual exercises. It constitutes an alternative to more descriptive methods such as Oaxaca decompositions and quantile counterfactual approaches. In an application, we study gender disparities in the public and private sectors with a French exhaustive administrative dataset. Whereas females are believed to be treated more fairly in the public sector, we find that the gender gap in propensity to get job positions along the wage distribution is rather similar in the two sectors. The gender wage gap in the public sector is 13:3 points and it increases by only 0:7 percentage points when workers are assigned to job positions according to the rules of the private sector. Nevertheless, the gender gap at the last decile in the public sector increases by as much as 3:6 percentage points when using the assignment rules of the private sector.

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This thesis consists of four articles, mainly empirical, on discrimination in the labor market. The first article focuses on the employment and wages of French people of North African origin, the second on their wages and access to managerial status, the third on the heterogeneity of their employment gaps, and the fourth uses data from a test designed to measure the impact of a prison background on access to employment in the United States. The added value of these articles is twofold. First, they provide new empirical evidence on the labor market situation of French people of foreign origin: employment and wage gaps with the reference population are high, but once differences between populations (age, education, etc.) are taken into account, most of the wage gaps disappear. On the contrary, a substantial part of the differences in employment and in the proportion of managers remains. Moreover, we propose an original description of the heterogeneity of employment gaps which shows that these gaps are relatively large for individuals whose employment rates would be the lowest in the reference population, while for those whose theoretical employment rates are higher these unexplained gaps are much smaller. Second, these articles provide methodological elements for measuring discrimination. The first three articles attempt to incorporate ideas and notations used in the public policy evaluation literature. The fourth attempts to shed light on the methods usually used in testing studies.

This paper proposes a new measure of gender di¤erences in access to jobs based on a job assignment model. This measure is the probability ratio of getting a job for females and males at each rank of the wage ladder. We derive a non-parametric estimator of this access measure and estimate it for French full-time executives aged 40 - 45 in the private sector. Our results show that the gender di¤erence in the probability of getting a job increases along the wage ladder from 9% to 50%. Females thus have a signi.cantly lower access to high-paid jobs than to low-paid jobs.