The Returns to Schooling in Rural China: Evidence from the Cultural Revolution Education Expansion

Terry Sicular () and Juan Yang ()

No 20152, University of Western Ontario, Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP) Working Papers from University of Western Ontario, Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP)

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Education Expansion; Secondary Education; Returns to Schooling; Rural China; Cultural Revolution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 I28 J24 J31 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-edu, nep-his, nep-lma and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1103&context=economicscibc (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uwo:hcuwoc:20152

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://economics.uw ... itting_ordering.html
The price is Paper copy available by mail at a cost of $10.00 Canadian each.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in University of Western Ontario, Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP) Working Papers from University of Western Ontario, Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP) Centre for Human Capital and Productivity (CHCP), Social Science Centre, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5C2.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().