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.     

Youth wage employment and parental education in Malawi

This paper looks at the relationship between the likelihood of being in regular wage employment and parental education for Malawian youth. It uses data from the third integrated household survey (IHS3). Only a mother's education is found to have a statistically significant effect on the likelihood of being in regular wage employment for young females and males. It is established that the effect of a mother's education on young males is significantly larger than that for young females. The paper also finds that, regardless of gender, a mother's education complements/reinforces the positive effect of a youth's own education on the probability of being in wage employment. The evidence from this paper points to the existence of an intergenerational poverty trap; with children of uneducated mothers or mothers with low education finding themselves outside regular wage jobs.     

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.     

父代关系与代际收入流动：基于教育和就业的视角

文章运用计量方法分析了父代关系与中国代际收入流动性的关系。我们用2010年中国家庭追踪调查中父代为了子女上学和就业“找关系”来衡量寻租行为,通过工具变量法和分位回归法探讨了父代关系对不同人群的影响。结果显示,为子女就学（就业）找关系对于代际收入流动有一定的促进作用;进一步,分位回归和不同社会区域特征的影响揭示,教育和就业领域的“寻租市场”远远不是完全有效市场,在这一市场中所进行的寻租行为进一步加剧了教育和就业资源在城乡之间、不同收入阶层之间原本就存在的分布不均。教育资源均等化和劳动力市场的进一步市场化对于减少为了子代福利而进行的寻租腐败行为、以及建设机会均等的和谐社会具有重要意义。     

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。     

中国居民家庭收入代际传递性分析

本文通过对父子收入代际弹性和家庭收入代际弹性的研究,发现子女收入很大程度上受到父亲收入或家庭收入的影响,证明了中国居民收入代际之间存在着较为明显的传递效应,特别是低收入群体。通过内外因分析,可以发现教育成为影响中国居民收入代际传递现象的重要因素。教育是一种重要的代际流动机制,个人教育水平提高和教育环境的公平可以使低收入群体有机会流向更高收入阶层。     

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.     

Multi-generational educational mobility in China in the twentieth century

Two essential strategies to understand the mechanisms of intergenerational mobility are to compare mobility across countries and across time. However, for multi-generational mobility, estimates for developing countries are mostly missing, and trend studies are rare. This paper uses education to measure social status and provides nationally representative estimates of social mobility over three generations in China that are suitable for international comparison. Results show that grandparents’ education positively correlates with children’s education, controlling for the parents’ education. This grandparent effect is comparable to what is found in Western countries, despite differences in cultures and institutions. During the sample period, the correlation between grandparent and child education is relatively stable. When exploring mechanisms, we find that the observed grandparent effect is primarily due to omitted information from the parents’ generation, not direct interactions between grandparents and children.     

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.     

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。     

Gender Differences in Schooling in Indonesia

Despite almost universal primary education in Indonesia, and increasing female educational participation, gender differences remain in access to Indonesian education. This paper attempts to measure and explain these differences at primary and secondary level in Indonesia's provinces between 1980 and 1985. It examines the relationship between provincial school enrolment ratios for males and females and four factors: school availability, formal sector employment, ‘drop-out’ patterns and marriage patterns. School availability is found to be a strong predictor of enrolment levels, and stronger for females than for males. Relationships between enrolment patterns and the other three factors appear less clear cut.     

New “useless education theory”: Highly educated parents' expectations for their children's education—Evidence from the one-child policy

Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) 2010 and a strictly implemented one-child policy as a quasi-experiment, this paper analyses the changes in parents' educational expectations of their children and the underlying mechanisms in a fuzzy regression discontinuity framework. It was found that one-child policy compliers have lower educational expectations for their children after acquiring an advanced education than those who did not. The finding remains valid after robustness analysis and placebo tests. Combined with an examination of the intergenerational effects of birth, this finding may be related to parents' assessment of and responses to educational returns and equality of educational opportunities. It was also found that parents with lower educational attainment in the high-income group have higher educational expectations than those with higher educational attainment, while for those with lower income, there is no significant difference between higher educational attainment and otherwise, which indirectly verifies the causal inference of this paper. The finding of this study explains the new “useless education theory” and provides a new perspective for understanding the intergenerational transmission of education.     

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.     

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.     

Occupational Mobility during South Africa's Industrial Take‐Off

In the absence of historical income or education data, the change in occupations over time can be used as a measure of mobility. This paper investigates intergenerational occupational mobility using a novel genealogical dataset for settler South Africa, spanning its transition from an agricultural to an early industrialised society (1800‐1909). We identify fathers and sons for whom we have complete information on occupational attainment. We follow a two‐generation discrete approach to measure changes in both absolute and relative mobility over time. Consistent with qualitative evidence of a shift away from agriculture as the economy's dominant sector, we see the farming class shrinking and the skilled and professional classes growing. Controlling for changes in the structure of the labour market over time, we find increasing mobility, becoming significant after the discovery of minerals in 1868. We find this mobility particularly for semi‐skilled workers but virtually no improved mobility for sons of farmers. We also test hypotheses related to the mobility prospects for first‐born sons and sons of immigrants.     

Upward mobility and the demand for children: Evidence from China

This paper aims to investigate a new determinant of the demand for children: upward mobility. Upward mobility can affect the demand for children in two opposite directions: upward mobility means more resources to spend on childbearing and increases the demand for children; it also lowers the need to rely on children for old-age support and this leads to lower demand for children. In this paper, we use the difference between the subject's self-evaluations of the future and current social class as the measure of upward mobility, and fertility desire to represent the demand for children. Using the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) data, we find that upward mobility significantly increases the demand for children, and the results are robust across various model specifications (pooled data regression, Poisson regression, and IV regression). The effect is concentrated among affluent and/or urban households, suggesting that those from more advantaged social-economic backgrounds appear to have a higher elasticity of fertility in response to upward mobility. Our results imply that improving upward mobility and public services such as education, health care, and social security would be effective to boost fertility in China.     

THE GROWTH OF THE KOREAN MIDDLE CLASS AND ITS SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS

The middle class in the Republic of Korea grew quickly in the course of the country's rapid economic growth. This paper analyzes the characteristics of Korea's new and old middle classes by examining the socioeconomic conditions, experience of mobility, and social consciousness of the people in these classes Analysis shows that many people presently in these well‐off classes have experienced intra‐ and intergenerational mobility. While the old middle class is greatly open to both inter‐ and intragenerational inflow, the new middle class is close to intragenerational inflow. The probability of reaching the new middle class is greatly affected by one's level of education, however, education level largely depends on one's class origin. It is also shown that the Korean new middle class has a comparatively progressive social consciousness. However, people's political attitudes are determined not by one's position in the class structure but by nonclass factors, such as one's age, education level, and native region.