Housing tenure and educational opportunity in the Paris metropolitan area

Quentin Ramond & Marco Oberti

Housing Studies, published online 12 novembre 2020
DOI: 10.1080/02673037.2020.1845304

Abstract and paper to download on Taylor & Francis portal

School segregation – that is, the unequal distribution of students from different racial,ethnic or socioeconomic background among schools – and the resulting educational inequalities are prominent concerns in policy and academic debates.
Research into the factors of school segregation tends to focus on households’ socioeconomic and cultural resources, but the role of housing tenure has been less discussed.
This paper examines the role of housing tenure (homeowner, private renter, public renter) in shaping educational opportunities at the level of middle school. We pay special attention to the middle classes because they may face complex trade-offs between housing and school decisions.

The paper addresses two questions. First, what are the relationships between housing tenure and the local school offer? Second, how do the middle classes navigate choices among housing tenure, place of residence, and schooling in a challenging housing context?

The Paris Metropolitan Area (MA) is a crucial case for this study: housing prices have sharply increased over the last two decades, the large public housing stock is increasingly aimed at middle-income households, and the school landscape combines a highly differentiated public sector which access is regulated by catchment areas with a selective private sector which is not concerned by this rule.

The empirical section first explores the distribution of children across school contexts according to their socioeconomic background and their parents’ housing tenure. Then, we examine the arrangements that the middle
classes make among housing tenure, place of residence and the local school offering.
Finally, we discuss our results in light of the debate about the consequences of unprecedented housing affordability constraints in major metropolitan areas across the advanced economies, and conclude by identifying implications for public policies and future research.

We show that proximity to a high-quality school offer is not only linked to household resources, but also depends on their capacity to navigate in a stratified housing market. In the Paris MA, the middle classes experience difficulty in accessing homeownership, but they manage to find affordable housing opportunities in desired school areas by taking advantage of the development of intermediate public housing...
The paper also highlights the key role played by the French welfare state and its housin regime.