The paper looks at whether the propensity of young people to follow the same career path as one of their parents is driven by privileges of position arising from regulation rather than from the intergenerational transmission of skills. The paper focuses on occupations for which the membership in a professional order is compulsory and analyses whether the liberalization measures of 2006 and 2011 had a different impact on the children of professionals and those of people employed in similar but unregulated professions.
The results show that the liberalization measures of 2006 and 2011 significantly reduced the intergenerational persistence in occupations for which membership in a professional order is compulsory. The impact was strongest in the field of social sciences and in the provinces where the demand for professional services is high and where the supply constraints previously created by regulation used to generate the most significant privileges of position.
Published in 2022 in: Journal of Human Resources, v. 57, 2, pp. 525-554
