The effects of China's higher education expansion on urban and rural intergenerational mobility

This study examines the heterogeneous effect of higher education on intergenerational mobility of rural and urban residents before and after China's higher education expansion (CHEE). Drawing on data from seven waves of the China General Social Survey (CGSS), we find that, although the overall effect of higher education decreases on alleviating intergenerational persistence after CHEE, undergraduate or postgraduate education can still significantly promote rural intergenerational mobility in terms of occupational-socioeconomic status. However, higher education appears to have changed from assisting social mobility to advancing intergenerational persistence in urban areas after CHEE. The propensity score matching method was used to mitigate sample selection bias, and all the findings were validated by several robustness checks, including placebo and Oster's (2019) omitted-variable tests.     

Export expansion and intergenerational education mobility: Evidence from China

This paper investigates the impact of China's export expansion during 2000–2007 on the local intergenerational education mobility. We construct prefecture-level export shocks, by exploiting variations in national cross-industry export changes and cross-prefecture industrial employment. Empirical results suggest that prefectures experiencing larger export shocks are more likely to have higher intergenerational education mobility. The baseline results stand when we use alternative measures for educational outcomes, consider the migration situations, or include more controls. Using the intergenerational mobility framework proposed by Becker et al. (2018), we explain and empirically test how income effect and substitution effect of export expansions influence education mobility. The mechanism testing suggests that the income effect is the dominant force underlying the results.     

Higher education expansion and crime: New evidence from China

In this paper we present causal evidence on the impact of higher education expansion on crime by exploiting a massive expansion of college enrollment in China since 1999, using data from multiple sources. Our identification strategy exploits regional variation in the intensity of the higher education expansion with partially identified difference-in-differences models. We explore various assumptions to account for the potential unparallel trends over years and find that college expansion causally reduces crime rates and the effect changes over time. Moreover, the crime reducing effect extends beyond the post-secondary educational level and into the senior high schools. Our findings document an important yet overlooked positive externality associated with higher education expansion.     

The impact of education on income inequality and intergenerational mobility

This paper analyses the effects of innate ability, compulsory education (grades 1–9), and non-compulsory education (grades 10–12 and higher education) on inequality and intergenerational mobility of income, by constructing a four-period overlapping-generation model. We find that innate ability and family investment in early education play important roles in explaining income inequality and intergenerational income mobility. Though children from the wealthiest families are only 1.36 times ‘smarter’ that those from the poorest, the gap in human capital expands to 2.35 at the end of compulsory education and to 2.89 at the end of non-compulsory education. One important reason for the increase is that poor families invest relatively less in children's early education than do wealthy families; therefore, their children attend lower-quality schools, which results in them being much less likely to participate in higher education. By simulating policy experiments for different types of government education expenditure, we find that direct subsidies to poor parents are the most efficient and effective policy for mitigating poor families' budget constraints with regard to early-education investment in their children.     

中国代际流动性：基于食品消费与收入视角的研究

代际流动性是衡量一个社会机会公平程度的重要指标,食品消费和收入的代际弹性分别从基本经济福利和整体经济禀赋两个方面对此进行反映。本文采用中国健康与营养调查数据,首次对中国食品消费的代际弹性进行了估计,并在同一数据库内将其与收入进行了比较。我们发现,与收入的代际弹性（0．427）相比,食品消费的代际弹性（0．879）更高,且在采用多年均值时更为稳定;同时,城镇户籍人口和受教育程度较高者拥有显著更高的代际收入流动性,而食品消费弹性在不同人群中的差异较小,显示基本经济福利和整体经济禀赋的代际不平等情况可能并不完全一致。     

Intergenerational education transmission in China: The gender dimension

This paper explores gender differences in intergenerational patterns of education attainment in China. Using the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) survey for 2016, we find that intergenerational ‘persistence’, as reflected in high regression and correlation coefficients between an individual's and their parents' education levels, is higher for females than males for the entire sample and for each of four age cohorts. This result stems primarily from the relative lack of upward mobility among females from families with low levels of education, as confirmed by a series of educational mobility matrices and a multinomial logistic regression analysis. The results offer novel insights into gender differences in the unequal transmission of education across generations, with significant implications for gender inequality more broadly in Chinese society.     

Impacts of education policies on intergenerational education mobility in China

This paper used the CHIP 2013 dataset to investigate the effects of two important education policies in China on intergenerational education mobility, including the Compulsory Education Law implemented in 1986 and college expansion policy (CEP) started from 1999. In general, our results reflect a relatively optimistic picture in urban China, but a less favorable pattern in rural areas. For the urban sample, both the Compulsory Education Law (CEL) and college expansion policy increase the probability of upward mobility at lower parental education level, and the college expansion policy further increases the intergenerational education mobility in urban China. In contrast, each of the two policies indeed reduces the intergenerational education mobility for the rural sample, and the effects found on upward mobility in urban China are non-existent for the rural sample. The unfavorable results in rural China can be attributed to poor enforcement of the policy or the lack of demand-side education reforms.     

Intergenerational income mobility and economic freedom

Numerous studies have found that income inequality reduces the chances of upward relative mobility (i.e., climbing up the income ladder). However, most of this work ignores the role played by institutional quality (namely, economic freedom) in determining mobility and increasing the individual's set of choices. We fill this gap by empirically testing the direct and indirect (through economic growth) impacts of economic freedom on intergenerational income mobility. We find that economic freedom has both direct and indirect effects on intergenerational income mobility, while income inequality is a strong predictor of downward income mobility. When we incorporate findings about the purely mechanical relationship between inequality and intergeneration income mobility, we find that the legal system and property rights component of economic freedom matters more than inequality. These results suggest that good institutions can increase intergenerational income mobility.     

Intergenerational transmission of education: The case of rural China

The intergenerational transmission of education has received considerable attention in recent empirical research in many countries. However, the research on intergenerational transmission of education in China is still relatively rare. This paper investigates the impact of parental schooling on their children's schooling in rural China using the data collected by the authors themselves. Our results show that (i) the intergenerational transmission of education in rural China is not as high as those have been reported in the literature for several other countries;(ii) There exists significant transmission effect of education in the subgroup born after the 1980s, but not for those who were born in the year of 1980 onward. The results also stand up to several different tests and robustness checks. Our findings suggest that promoting the equal education opportunity and investing in children of disadvantaged group will have long-term effects for the accumulation of human capital. China can promote increasing gains for its acquisition of human capital, and tap into this foundation for sustainable growth and development in the future.     

Migrating for children’s better future: Intergenerational mobility of internal migrants’ children in Indonesia

Internal migration dominates population mobility in Indonesia; according to the 2010 census, there were almost 30 million permanent migrants, around 12.5 percent of the population. The effects of this internal migration on the second generation continue to be under-explored. This paper investigates the long-term impact of parents’ migration on their children’s intergenerational per capita expenditure when adults. We argue that parental migration affects the human capital investment on their children, which has a direct impact on the children’s outcomes when adults and on their deviation from the parents’ economic status, hence their intergenerational mobility. We pooled the five waves of data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS), and we tackled the self-selection of parents’ migration using an endogenous treatment regression. Our findings show that despite the fact that parental migration increases the education level of children and their per capita expenditure, it increases intergenerational mobility of the children as adults compared with non-migrants’ children when they live in urban areas as adults, come from the poorest parents, or had migrated during childhood. The left-behind children have more intergenerational mobility only if their father migrated, while there is no significant impact on intergenerational mobility if their mother migrated. The results are consistent with the persistence of Indonesian individual inequality.     

Unhealthy consumption behaviors and their intergenerational persistence: The role of education

As one of the countries sharing the world's largest population of smokers and drinkers, China has been facing serious health-related problems from smoking and drinking in recent decades. This paper attempts to investigate the impact of education on unhealthy consumption behaviors (smoking, binge drinking, and drinking) and their intergenerational persistence, using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) for the period from 1991 to 2011. Estimation results suggest that there exists significantly positive intergenerational persistence of unhealthy consumption behaviors in China, and this persistence seems to be higher from the mother than from the father. After introducing two institutional changes as instruments to address the endogeneity problem of education in unhealthy consumption equations, we find that education has a significantly negative impact on smoking and binge drinking according to the results from instrumental variable estimation. Specifically, an additional year of education decreases the probability of smoking and binge drinking by 4.1% and 3.4%, respectively. Although the health effect of drinking is ambiguous, we also find that the likelihood of drinking decreases by 1.6% with one additional schooling year. Interestingly, an additional year of education could counteract intergenerational persistence of smoking and binge drinking from the father, but it has no impact on intergenerational persistence from the mother. Our results suggest that education might be an efficient way to control unhealthy consumption behaviors in China, but it might not be an efficient way to prevent intergenerational persistence of unhealthy consumption behavior from the mother.     

Parental socioeconomic status and children’s cognitive ability in China

It is widely recognized that intergenerational transmission is one of the primary causes of persistent social inequality. Using nationally representative data, the China Family Panel Studies, this paper is one of the first to comprehensively investigate parental SES and children’s cognitive outcomes in China and moves beyond existing work by accounting for the direct intergenerational transmission of cognitive ability and by examining various novel mechanisms. Our results show that parents’ education rather than income is positively associated with their children’s cognitive abilities. The analysis of mechanisms shows that educational disparity widens the gap in parental investment, as well as parental beliefs regarding education and expectations for their children. Nevertheless, we do not find differences in parenting productivity. In addition, we find that the impact is more prominent in rural areas where education resources are much more limited. Various tests have been performed to prove the robustness of our findings.     

The Role of ICT in Modulating the Effect of Education and Lifelong Learning on Income Inequality and Economic Growth in Africa

This study assesses the role of information and communication technologies (ICT) in modulating the impact of education and lifelong learning on income inequality and economic growth. It focuses on a sample of 48 African countries from 2004 to 2014. The empirical evidence is based on the generalized method of moments. The following findings are established. First, mobile phone and internet each interact with primary school education to decrease income inequality. Second, all ICT indicators interact with secondary school education to exert a negative impact on the Gini index. Third, fixed broadband distinctly interacts with primary school education and lifelong learning to have a positive effect on economic growth. Fourth, ICT indicators do not significantly influence inequality and economic growth through tertiary school education and lifelong learning. These main findings are further substantiated. Policy implications are discussed.     

The effect of education on health and health behaviors: Evidence from the college enrollment expansion in China

By exploiting the massive college enrollment expansion in China beginning in 1999, we investigate the effect of higher education on health and health behaviors. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies in 2018 and employing an instrumental variable approach, we find that higher education has a significant effect on health and health behaviors. Each additional year of education increases the probability of reporting good health and having good memory by 1.9 and 3.1 percentage points (pp), respectively. Moreover, it decreases the probability of being overweight, smoking, and drinking by 1.3, 2.3, and 1.2 pp., respectively. By comparing the effect size with the findings in previous literature, we conclude that the effect of education on health is greater at higher levels of education. Further analysis suggests that education may affect health and health behaviors through two channels: the resources acquired by individuals and the prices faced by them.     

寒门难出贵子?——基于“家庭财富-教育投资-贫富差距”的实证研究

文章首次从教育选择的角度出发,探讨了人力资本投资与收入差距之间的关系,作者首先建立了教育回报的代际交迭模型,推断出富裕家庭教育回报率高这个事实会拉大社会的贫富差距。作者使用1992年至2009年的中国城镇住户调查数据对理论推论进行了论证,实证结果表明出身"寒门"的子女期望教育回报率更低,这拉大了与富裕家庭群体的收入差距,也是"寒门难出贵子"的原因。自2001年来,家庭因素带来的教育回报差异能够解释19.1%的城镇居民收入差距,引入工具变量的结果表明,真实的情况可能更加严重。作者进一步模拟了"新常态"下的贫富差距状况,结果表明,经济潜在增速下降会使得基尼系数扩大6.1%。     

Measuring the provincial supply of higher education institutions in China

This paper proposes and estimates three novel higher education indices for 31 Chinese provinces: i) the Chinese Higher Education Density Index (CHEDI) to analyze the evolution of the quantitative distribution of higher education institutions (HEIs) in each province from 2001 to 2017, which is further decomposed into subgroups based on the type of college, i.e., four-year undergraduate colleges, two-year vocational colleges, and private institutions; ii) the Chinese Higher Education Quality Index (CHEQI) to examine the supply of higher education in terms of quality using a university ranking system; and iii) the Chinese Higher Education Index (CHEI), a composite indicator that incorporates both the quantity and quality dimensions of higher education institutions for each province, providing a weighted measure of the supply of higher education in China. The empirical findings indicate a significant and persistent heterogeneity in the supply of higher education between provinces. The indices identify which regions have been substantially rewarded by the higher education expansion of recent decades, going from an undersupply to a proportionate supply of higher education institutions. On the other hand, a significant share of regions still has a low supply in terms of either the quantity or quality of HEIs, or both.     

政治资本、代际传递、进入与晋升：以公共部门为例

文章利用中共宁夏区委党校培训官员的调研样本实证分析了公共部门内部父母政治资本的代际传递状况,在排除了样本自选择偏误之后,回归结果表明：父母政治资本对进入公平和晋升公平的影响并非全局性的,而是针对特定群体。公务员考试制度的全面推广促进了进入公平,使得进入不公平只存在于那些并非通过公开考试进入公共部门的官员群体之中;晋升不公平则表现出“顶端优势效应”,对于低级别官员并不显著,随着级别的提高,父母政治资本对官员提拔速度的正面效应才相对显著。以上发现表明,利用制度建设削弱政治资本的代际传递仍然具有现实迫切性,只有通过选人必考、任人唯贤才能维护公共部门内部个体发展的机会公平和规则公平。     

Intergenerational transfer of human capital and its impact on income mobility: Evidence from China

This paper analyzes theoretically and empirically the impact of intergenerational transmission of human capital on the income mobility in China. We use a three-period overlapping-generations (OLG) model to show that the human capital transfer plays a remarkable role in determining the parent-to-offspring investment in human capital and the intergenerational elasticity of income. We then estimate a simultaneous equations model (SEM) using the 1989–2009 China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data to verify our theoretical predictions. The results show that (i) human capital, measured by health and education, is directly transmitted from one generation to the next, reflecting the parent-induced inequality of development opportunities among offspring in China; (ii) the estimated intergenerational income elasticity increases from 0.429 to 0.481 when the direct transfer of human capital is accounted for, suggesting that omitting this mechanism would overestimate China's income mobility. Our findings provide policy implications on strengthening human capital investments among the disadvantaged groups, reinforcing reforms that promote equality of opportunity, and improving the efficiency of labor markets in China.     

职业初期的“拼爹”严重吗?——基于代际收入传递的视角

文章聚焦于子代职业早期，建立理论模型和连续变量处理效应模型研究父代收入对子代收入的因果性影响，研究发现：第一，理论上讲，代际收入弹性与人力资本回报率、社会资本回报率正相关，与政府对人力资本投资的累进性负相关；第二，在子代职业早期阶段，父亲收入对子代收入有正向因果性影响，且代际收入弹性整体偏低，说明代际收入流动性相对较大；第三，局部代际收入弹性和子代收入波动随着父亲收入水平的上升而下降，说明低收入父亲的子女的代际收入流动性相对较低，易发生贫困的代际传递；第四，代际收入传递存在一定的城乡和性别差异。以上结论说明在我国职业早期代际收入流动性较高，因此，政府在实施相关提升代际收入流动性的政策时，可侧重于劳动者职业生涯的中、后期，同时，应继续提高公共教育政策的累进性。