Education and Employment: A Survey of French Research

Abstract

There is little doubt that at the end of the 1 960s, French research into the education-income relationship as a means of analysing also the relationship between training and employment remained unadvanced by comparison with work of this kind undertaken in English-speaking countries. Mainly attributable to a lack of appropriate data, this weakness incited the public authorities to develop, at the beginning of the 1970s, the gathering of such information, first on the cost of education, and then on wage levels. Thenceforth, the education-income relationship was subject to close analysis, while studies were carried out to elucidate the influence of variables other than education itself. Indeed, the need to introduce a greater number of variables in regard to both the description of the individual concerned and to his or her professional environment has since become increasingly clear. The arrival on the labour market of the highly populated post-war generations, the progressive disassociation between training and employment, the diversification of the educational system and the difficulties inherent in employing young people are just some of the factors which have led to the collection of data enabling the processes by which employment is sought and obtained to be analysed in more detail. A large part of our discussion, therefore, will be devoted to studies analysing the entry of young people into working life. At the same time, French research has not been confined to this field. As a result of valuable work focusing on age-income trends and on rates of return, it has been possible to refine the analysis of the influence of several factors linked both to training and to the individual concerned. The macro-economic aspect has also been developed, though it has been less in evidence, mainly because of the inadequate understanding of micro-economic phenomena. Indeed, research conducted within the context of French planning has led to substantial progress in this field. At a conceptual level, recent debate on the concept of skill has resulted in the identification and definition of frequently used but insufficiently clarified terms.