The Effect of Education Expansion on Intergenerational Mobility of Education: Evidence from China

Liu, Ling and Wan, Qian (2017): The Effect of Education Expansion on Intergenerational Mobility of Education: Evidence from China.

Abstract

Using the data from Chinese Household Income Project, we study the effect of education expansion on intergenerational mobility of education measured with intergenerational transmission of education (ITE) through an exogenous shock, higher education expansion in 1999. Measuring ITE with years of schooling, higher education expansion (HEE) significantly decreases ITE, meaning that the gap of years of schooling between the children from different family educational background is narrowed by HEE and intergeneration mobility of education is promoted by HEE. However, when we take school quality into account and measure ITE with score of college entrance examination (CEE), HEE insignificantly decreases ITE measured with score of CEE, indicating that HEE fails to reduce the gap of higher education quality between the children from different family educational background and the inequality of higher education still maintains in some way even after HEE. We also find that ITE measured with years of schooling has an inverted-U relationship with college admission rate and ITE measured with score of CEE seems not correlate with college admission rate, which directly demonstrate the theories of MMI and EMI in the field of sociology. We further investigate the internal mechanism of the effects and we consider that the original of the inequality of higher education is the inequality of basic education. At last, we investigate the heterogeneity in the effect of HEE on ITE by gender, type of Hukou and category of CEE.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Higher Education Expansion; Intergenerational Transmission of Education; Inequality of Opportunity
• Subjects: I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I2 - Education and Research Institutions > I28 - Government Policy; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J6 - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers > J62 - Job, Occupational, and Intergenerational Mobility

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