Research On Intergenerational Educational Mobility In China

This paper studies the intergenerational educational mobility in China from the perspectives of urban-rural dual structure.There are mainly four parts.The first is how to accurately estimate the intergenerational mobility in education.The second is to estimate the spatial differences and trends of educational intergenerational mobility.The third is to explain the spatial differences and trends of intergenerational mobility in education.The fourth is to empirically analyze the impact of free compulsory education policy on urban-rural equality of opportunity in education.The first is about how to accurately estimate the intergenerational mobility of education.In order to overcome the problem of small sample size in survey data,we choose to use large sample census data to estimate education intergenerational mobility.The co-residency bias is prevalent when we use the inner-household matching samples to estimate intergenerational mobility.In this paper we propose a modified method to overcome the co-residency bias,and apply this method to census data to estimate the intergenerational educational mobility in China.Taking advantage of sample limitation,regression prediction and mean substitution to reduce the co-residency bias.Using the urban household data of CHIP2013 with inner and inter household matching samples,we can verify the modified method and find that it can effectively overcome the co-residency bias.The second is about estimating spatial differences and trends of educational intergenerational mobility.The modified method is applied to census data to estimate the spatial differences and trends of the intergenerational mobility in education.In the spatial dimension,taking the 2000 census data as an example,this paper estimates the intergenerational educational mobility of the 1983 birth cohort.The results show that there are obvious spatial differences in intergenerational mobility.The intergenerational educational mobility in coastal areas is higher than that in Northeast and western regions.In the time dimension,we use the census data of 1982,1990,2000,2005,2010 and 2015 to estimate the intergenerational educational mobility of the 1963,1972,1983,1988,1993 and 1998 birth cohorts respectively.The intergenerational mobility of the 1963-1993 birth cohorts showed a declining trend,while the intergenerational mobility of the 1998 birth cohort increased.Estimating the intergenerational mobility by urban and rural areas,the results show that except for the 1963 birth cohort,the intergenerational educational mobility in other birth cohorts is significantly different between urban and rural areas.The intergenerational mobility in urban areas presents a "U" shape,the lowest in the 1983 birth cohort.While the intergenerational mobility in rural areas continued to decline and it was not until 1998 birth cohort that there was a slight increase.On the whole,there is an intersection between the intergenerational mobility of urban and rural areas.At first,the intergenerational educational mobility in urban areas was lower than that in rural areas,and then the intergenerational mobility in rural areas continued to decline.Since 1988,the intergenerational mobility in urban areas was higher than that in rural areas.The third is about how to explain the spatial differences and trends of intergenerational educational mobility.Taking the perspective of urban-rural dual segmentation caused by household registration system,the impacts of urban-rural dual segmentation on intergenerational educational mobility are analyzed by building a theoretical model.According to the results of model analysis,we put forward the research hypotheses.The results show that the urban-rural gaps of government educational investment and human capital return rate will affect the urban-rural income gap,while the widening urban-rural income gap will reduce the intergenerational mobility.Increasing the government educational investment of rural areas can improve the intergenerational mobility of rural areas and narrow the urban-rural income gap.To narrow the urban-rural gap of educational returns,we can narrow the urban-rural income gap and improve intergenerational mobility.In the case of urban-rural segmentation,income inequality can be divided into inter urban-rural income inequality and inner urban-rural income inequality.The increasing inter urban-rural income inequality will reduce intergenerational mobility,while the increasing inner urban-rural income inequality will help to improve intergenerational mobility.The fourth is about the impact of free compulsory education policy on urban-rural educational opportunity equality.The empirical results show that the policy can narrow the urban-rural gap of educational attainment and improve the urban-rural equality of opportunity in education.One more year affected by the policy,the urban-rural gap of educational attainment will reduce by about 0.3 years.Compared with men,the policy has a greater effect on women.Compared with the eastern and central regions,the policy has a greater effect on the western region.Further research shows that the policy can narrow the educational gap between the children coming from high-income and low-income families.Part of the reason why the policy can narrow urban-rural gap in education is the large income gap between urban and rural areas.However,family income can’t fully explain the mechanism of the policy.In rural areas,the new educational opportunities brought about by the policy are not evenly distributed.Families with higher education level of their parents have significant advantages in obtaining new educational opportunities,which leads to the decline of the intergenerational educational mobility.