Is Extending Compulsory Schooling Alone Enough to Raise Earnings? Evidence from French and British Compulsory Schooling Laws

In this paper, I compare two reforms that raised the minimum school-leaving age to 16 in France (1967) and in England and Wales (1972). Using a regression discontinuity design, I find that while the reform in England and Wales led to a 6-7 percent increase in hourly wages per additional year of compulsory schooling, the impact of the change to French law was close to zero. The results suggest that the major difference between the two reforms was that the fraction of individuals holding no qualifications dropped sharply after the introduction of the new minimum school-leaving age in England and Wales, whereas it remained unchanged in France.