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.