Returns to Education in China

The income gap between urban and rural residents has long been a predicament for China. The differences between returns to education in urban and rural China are one of the important factors affecting the income gap. Using a combination of data from CHNS, CHIP, CGSS, CFPS, CHFS, and CSS, the differences in returns to education and its evolution in China from 1989 to 2019 were estimated. Results show that returns to education in urban China have been consistently higher than that in rural China. Returns to education in urban China show a trend of progressive increase, then a rapid rise, before turning into a slow decline and gradually leveling off; returns to education in rural China exhibit a slowly increasing trend before gradually leveling off; the differences between returns to education in urban and rural China show an evolution of first growing larger, then smaller, before gradually leveling off. The spouse's education was considered the instrumental variable of individuals' education. The robustness test was done with an estimation through a two-stage least squares (2SLS) method. Results indicate that the empirical conclusion has good robustness. The evolution of returns to education in China was explained in terms of the marketization of labor forces, the relative supply and demand of labor forces, the reform of the household registration system, and the evolution of the quality of education.

The income gap between urban and rural residents has long been a predicament for China. The differences between returns to education in urban and rural China are one of the important factors affecting the income gap. Using a combination of data from CHNS, CHIP, CGSS, CFPS, CHFS, and CSS, the differences in returns to education and its evolution in China from 1989 to 2019 were estimated. Results show that returns to education in urban China have been consistently higher than that in rural China. Returns to education in urban China show a trend of progressive increase, then a rapid rise, before turning into a slow decline and gradually leveling off; returns to education in rural China exhibit a slowly increasing trend before gradually leveling off; the differences between returns to education in urban and rural China show an evolution of first growing larger, then smaller, before gradually leveling off. The spouse’s education was considered the instrumental variable of individuals’ education. The robustness test was done with an estimation through a two-stage least squares (2SLS) method. Results indicate that the empirical conclusion has good robustness. The evolution of returns to education in China was explained in terms of the marketization of labor forces, the relative supply and demand of labor forces, the reform of the household registration system, and the evolution of the quality of education.

The intuition underlying our analysis of these data is simple and direct. Each yearbook entry shows the proportion of female workers and the average wage of all workers. If mens wages exceed womens wages by a substantial margin we expect a negative association between the proportion of female workers and the average wage: the higher the proportion of women the lower the average wage. Applying econometric methods to large numbers of such observations permits us to obtain statistical estimates of the gender wage gap in Chinas urban labour markets. We seek answers to a series of interrelated questions. Do men earn more than women? If so is the wage gap large or small? Does the male-female wage differential rise or fall over time? To what extent can the wage gap be attributed to specific factors such as location economic sector type of ownership (state collective other) or educational attainments? What is the size and trend of the residual male-female wage inequalities which persist after we apply statistical controls for these factors? To what extent are women crowded into low-paying industries? (excerpt)

When China's leaders launched rural reforms in the late 1970s, they acknowledged the nation's need to modify its commitment to egalitarianism.1 Slogans such as Tt is glorious to be rich!' and 'Some areas will lead; others will follow!' signalled this fundamental shift in ideology. Leaders backed up these exhortations with a series of concrete policy actions ? establishing the Special Economic Zones and implementing the East Coast-first policy, introducing financial reforms, and initiating the rural industrialization movement. In China's version of the 'trickle down' theory, certain core areas were to take the lead in the modernization process and provide models for other areas to later emulate. Adopting strategies that had been employed

The articles published in this issue of the Journal help advance the debate on market reform in former socialist states. In our comment, besides dealing with data analysis issues, we suggest several ways to improve the level of debate about substantive issues. These suggestions include more attention to politics, including path dependence, and more attention to middle-level generalizations from other developing market societies.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to apply analysis of public discourses on Ze Xiao to explore and interpret the power relationships shaping inequality in admission to public junior high schools in urban China. Design/methodology/approach – This study first introduces the rise of Ze Xiao as an educational phenomenon in China. It then elucidates power relationships in public school admission by analyzing continuities and changes in stakeholders’ interaction in public school admission. It concludes by discussing educational reform for equal public school admission in urban China. Data were collected from written and spoken texts about public school admission, including newspaper articles from the 1980s to the 2000s, policy documents and interviews with relevant stakeholders. Findings – Findings demonstrate that multi-layered power relationships caused diverse inequalities in admission to public secondary education in urban China. These are represented by political and institutional privileges and an imbalance in education development during the social transition from a profit-driven approach in the 1990s to a balance-centered one after 2000. Arguably, there is a necessity to further promote a systematic reform to terminate the privileges and imbalance for an equal and balanced public secondary education in urban China post-2015. Originality/value – This study attempts to make a contribution toward reconstructing the meaning of inequality in admission to public junior high schools in urban areas by revealing the power relationships among stakeholders constituted through their interactions in public education during the different stages of socio-economic development in urban China.

A key school system, started in the 1950s, stratified the public school system in China into key schools and regular schools. Despite an “official abolishment” of the system in the late 1990s, this system led to an enlargement of gaps in development between key schools and regular schools. On the other hand, the limited access to the key schools was commercialized by local educational administrations to seek rent for generating fund to develop the local public education sector. This caused competition for admission to key junior high schools in urban China. In this chapter, the author will review the history of the key school system and the expansion of gaps between public schools. Then, he will explain how stratification of the public school system and commercialization of the limited access to the key schools formulated inequality in admission to public junior high schools in urban China through analyzing the public discourses. In the end, he will untangle a rise of collusion between the key schools and cram schools in student selection for admission to public lower secondary education in urban China by analyzing interviews with school principals and managers of cram schools in Beijing.

More than 2 decades of economic reforms have brought great improvements in the quality of life for women and girls in China. Despite these improvements, in some areas, cultural values and norms concerning gender roles and traditional family structures still influence the values attached to sons and daughters and create strong incentives for son preference (Croll 2000; Li and Lavely 2003). The most striking evidence of the priority parents place on sons is demographic: the "missing girls" phenomenon of abnormally masculine sex ratios at birth. This phenomenon has become more extreme in the economic reform period (Banister 2004). Comments Copyright The University of Chicago Press. Reprinted from Comparative Education Review, Volume 51, Issue 2, May 2007, pages 131-157. Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/512023 This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/gansu_papers/2 Electronically published March 14, 2007 Comparative Education Review, vol. 51, no. 2. 2007 by the Comparative and International Education Society. All rights reserved. 0010-4086/2007/5102-0004$05.00 Comparative Education Review 131 Do Mothers in Rural China Practice Gender Equality in Educational Aspirations for Their Children? YUPING ZHANG, GRACE KAO, AND EMILY HANNUM More than 2 decades of economic reforms have brought great improvements in the quality of life for women and girls in China. Despite these improvements, in some areas, cultural values and norms concerning gender roles and traditional family structures still influence the values attached to sons and daughters and create strong incentives for son preference (Croll 2000; Li and Lavely 2003). The most striking evidence of the priority parents place on sons is demographic: the “missing girls” phenomenon of abnormally masculine sex ratios at birth. This phenomenon has become more extreme in the economic reform period (Banister 2004). However, whether parents privilege sons over daughters in making educational investments is a different question. Educational differences between girls and boys have become much more subtle in recent years (Hannum 2005; Connelly and Zheng 2007a, 2007b). This trend raises questions about whether traditional attitudes can still be linked to a disadvantage for girls in education. In this article, we focus on a poor rural area in northwestern China and investigate whether the gender attitudes of mothers can be linked to their plans for educating their own children in the future. Using recent longitudinal data from the Gansu Survey of Children and Families (GSCF), a survey of rural 9–12-year-old children, families, and schools in Gansu province, we explore whether mothers’ attitudes toward gender equality and oldage support, their expectations of future returns from children, mothers’ perceptions of a child’s promise for continuing schooling, and the child’s actual school performance are linked with mothers’ educational aspirations for the child, controlling for family characteristics. Our article proceeds as follows. We begin by reviewing earlier research on educational aspirations and on gender and education in developing countries. We next discuss the cultural and social contexts of rural China and of Gansu in particular. We then provide an overview of our data and proceed with the analyses. We first show descriptive tabulations of mothers’ beliefs and attitudes regarding gender equality and mothers’ anticipated future fiData collection for the Gansu Survey of Children and Families was supported by grants from the Spencer Foundation Small and Major Grants Programs (wave 1), by NIH grants 1R01TW005930-01 and 5R01TW005930-02 (wave 2), and by a grant from the World Bank (wave 2). Analysis was supported by the University of Pennsylvania Research Foundation.

By optimizing human capital in rural areas, a steady increase in the rates of return on human capital in rural areas will be achieved, and the fundamental problem of the difference in the rate of return on human capital between urban and rural areas will be solved.Based on the Chinese database "China Knowledge Network Database", "China Weipu Network Database", "China Wanfang Network Database", "Baidu Academic" and "Google Scholar Mirror", this article conducts a meta-analysis on the return to human capital in China . The forest map, Begger's test and meta-regression analysis are used as analysis methods to determine and test the heterogeneity. According to the forest map, the β1 effect size is combined and calculated that [Overall (I-squared) = 99.3%> 50%, p=0.000]; (Heterogeneity between groups:P =0.000 <0.05 ). According to the forest map, the β2 effect size is combined and calculated that [Overall (I-squared) =99.6%>50%, p=0.000]; (Heterogeneity between groups:P =0.003<0.05).According to the forest map, the Adj-R²effect size is combined and calculated that [Overall (I-squared) =99.8%>50%, p=0.000]; (Heterogeneity between groups:P =0.000<0.05). According to meta-regression analysis, the results of Adj-R² (Coef.)=0.081 >β1 (Coef.)=0.046>β2 (Coef.)=0.009 Indicate that the explanation strength of urban and rural factors to the human capital return rate under comprehensive considerations, namely Adj-R², is 8.1%, the explanation strength of urban and rural factors to the education return rate, namely β1, is 4.6%, and the explanation strength of urban and rural factors to the work experience rate of return, namely β2, is 0.09%. There are obvious differences between the different studies on the rate of return on human capital in China and the urban and rural areas; there is no publication bias in all the research variables; the urban and rural factors have a certain impact on the rate of return on human capital, mainly through education and work experience, among which urban and rural factors have the greatest impact on education of human capital.

Evidence from developed countries shows that there is a significant gender gap in STEM occupations. Girls may begin to underperform in math early as primary school. One possible explanation is the negative stereotype threat towards girls. However, this has been understudied in rural China. In this paper, we describe the math performance gender gap in rural China, compare the gender gap between rural and urban China, and finally compare the Chinese situation with other countries. We further examine possible explanations for the gender gap from comparative perspectives. Using first hand datasets of 3,789 primary students and 12,702 junior high students in China, combing with OECD 2012 PISA survey data, we find that in both rural and urban China, boys outperform girls in math. As students grow older, the gap widens, which is larger than in many other countries. We further find that both the gender gaps in math self-concept and math anxiety and discriminatory family investment towards girls are not sufficient to explain the wide math performance gaps. Our study suggests the inequality of education in rural China still merits concern and calls for further work to explain the observed gender gap in math performance. Acknowledgement : The authors would like to acknowledge the funding of the 111 project (B16031), the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) and the Ford Foundation.

China is undergoing a marked transition in its diet and nutritional status patterns. This study determines the structural change in the impact of income on food consumption in China during 1989-93. Utilizing data from a longitudinal study of 3800 households in China evidence points to a shift in the relationship between income dietary structure and total nutrient intake at the macrolevel. Overall it is noted that the increase in income over time in the country coincided with a shift in the demand for inferior and normal food groups. In addition there was a pronounced increase in the income elasticity for more luxury foods during the specified period while less superior goods became more inferior over this 4-year span. Such an increase in income elasticities for total energy and for energy from fat suggest a worsening of the composition of the diet in ways that are linked to obesity and obesity-related diseases as incomes continue to rise. In view of this several implications for the formulation of future nutrition policies in China are cited.

Despite repeated attempts to integrate competing perspectives (Szelenyi and Kostello 1996; Nee and Matthews 1996), the ongoing market transition debate has shown no signs of resolution. Instead, the 1996 AJS market transition symposium seems to have created more controversy than it settled (Nee 1996; Xie and Hannum 1996; Oberschall 1996; Parish and Michelson 1996; Walder 1996; Fligstein 1996; Szelenyi and Kostello 1996). And subsequent studies continue to reach nearly opposite conclusions (cf. Bian and Logan 1996; Gerber and Hout 1998; with Brainerd 1998; Nee and Cao, in press). When arguments become polarized, it often signals that divisions are falsely drawn (Bates 1997). Although originally made in another context, this observation is applicable here. As principals in this lively debate, we believe that clarification and reevaluation are essential for moving toward a reconciliation of competing viewpoints. In this comment we therefore identify the central issues in the controversy and provide an overall assessment of existing empirical evidence

China's rural economic reforms radically altered land tenure in rural China. With the granting of land use rights and residual income rights to farming households between 1979 and 1983, agriculture shifted from a collective-based to a familybased system. Land was not privatized, however. Ownership remained "collective", with local officials, typically at the village level, exercising a major influence over the allocation of land and the way households could use land. The initial land allocations to families were typically based on household size, household labour supply, or both. The central government's policy was that these allocations were supposed to be for 15 years. In some villages, land use contracts have been respected; in other villages, however, local leaders have periodically redistributed land among households and have intervened throughout the reform period to determine how farmers are able to use the land. The initial reforms triggered an unprecedented acceleration of agricultural growth in China. From 1979 to 1984, the gross value of agricultural output increased in real terms at an annual rate of 7.6 per cent, and grain production rose by 4.9 per cent annually.' Empirical studies attribute a significant part of this increase to enhanced incentives, as farmers were able to keep the output and

Unequal school enrollment rights, rent yields gap, and increased inequality: The case of Shanghai

Estimating returns to education in urban China: Evidence from a natural experiment in schooling reform