The returns to schooling in rural China: Evidence from the Cultural Revolution education expansion

During the Cultural Revolution China embarked on a remarkable, albeit temporary, expansion of post-primary education in rural areas. This education expansion affected tens of millions of children who reached secondary school age in the late 1960s and 1970s. Exploiting the education expansion and variation across birth cohorts, we estimate the returns to schooling in rural China using household survey data from the mid-1990s. Our estimated returns of 11 to 20 percent are substantially higher than most previous estimates. We calculate the impact of the education expansion on subsequent labor market outcomes of the affected cohorts and find that they enjoyed significantly higher earnings than pre- and post-expansion cohorts

Educational inequality in China: The intergenerational dimension

Chapter from: 'Rising Inequality in China: Challenge to a Harmonious Society', edited by Shi Li, Hiroshi Sato and Terry Sicular

Housing ownership, incomes, and inequality in China: 2002 - 2007

Chapter from: 'Rising Inequality in China: Challenge to a Harmonious Society', edited by Shi Li, Hiroshi Sato and Terry Sicular

The urban-rural income gap and inequality in China

Using new household survey data for 1995 and 2002, we investigate the size of China’s urban-rural income gap, the gap’s contribution to overall inequality in China, and the factors underlying the gap. Our analysis improves on past estimates by using a fuller measure of income, adjusting for spatial price differences and including migrants. Our methods include inequality decomposition by population subgroup and the Oaxaca- Blinder decomposition. Several key findings emerge. First, the adjustments substantially reduce China’s urban-rural income gap and its contribution to inequality. Nevertheless, the gap remains large and has increased somewhat over time. Second, after controlling for household characteristics, location of residence remains the most important factor underlying the urban-rural income gap. The only household characteristic that contributes substantially to the gap is education. Differences in the endowments of, and returns to, other household characteristics such as family size and composition, landholdings, and communist party membership are relatively unimportant. – China ; urban-rural inequality ; incom

Overview: Income inequality and poverty in China, 2002 - 2007

Chapter from: 'Rising Inequality in China: Challenge to a Harmonious Society', edited by Shi Li, Hiroshi Sato and Terry Sicular

The changing determinants of high school attainment in rural China

The substantial shift in rural schooling levels and the contemporaneous changes in educational finance policy including tax and fees reform, two exempt and one compensation policy and school rearrangement policy, raise the need for a fresh look at the determinants of rural education. In this paper we have examined the determinants of rural high school attainment and changes in those determinants between the years 2002 and 2007 at multiple levels (individual, family and community level). We find that the increasing importance of community versus household and individual factors in determining rural children's schooling attainment between 2002 and 2007. In addition, government expenditures have a significant and positive impact on high school attainment in both years, with a shift in the relative importance of budgetary versus extrabudgetary funding

Capital Flight and Foreign Investment: Two Tales from China and Russia

this paper I explore some such issues. I begin below with a brief discussion of definitions and an evaluation of available statistic