Inequality in Intergenerational Mobility of Education in China

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-124X.2013.12013.x
• Author: Jane Golley,Sherry Tao Kong
• Date: 01 March 2013
• Published date: 01 March 2013

15

China & World Economy / 15–37, Vol. 21, No. 2, 2013

©2013 The Authors

China & World Economy ©2013 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Inequality in Intergenerational Mobility

of Education in China

Jane Golley, Sherry Tao Kong*

Abstract

This paper investigates trends in intergenerational patterns of educational attainment of

those born in China between 1941 and 1990. Employing the 2008 Rural–Urban Migration

in China and Indonesia Survey, we find that intergenerational correlation is lower in rural

and migrant than in urban populations. The higher mobility observed in rural and migrant

populations stems from the fact that the majority of these children complete only junior high

school, with some children in the youngest cohorts moving down the education ladder

relative to their parents. In contrast, urban children seem to at least maintain their parents’

education level. The persistence of intergenerational transmission of education at high

levels in urban areas combined with some mobility, upward or downward, in rural areas is

likely to aggravate China’s rural–urban disparity. Policies should focus more on the

underlying gaps in education opportunities and the improvement in education of the rural

and migrant populations.

Key words: educational attainment, inequality, intergenerational persistence and mobility

JEL codes: I24, R00, R20

I. Introduction

Over the past six decades, China has achieved remarkable advances in terms of raising

national average standards of educational quality and attainment. However, these

achievements have been distributed unevenly across the country. By the late 2000s, less

than 20 percent of rural children were entering high school, with a mere 1.3 percent enrolling

in tertiary-level education, despite the fact that more than 90 percent of primary school

* Jane Golley, Associate Director, Australian Centre on China in the World, College of Asia and the

Pacific, Australian National University (ANU), Canberra, Australia. Email: jane.golley@anu.edu.au; Sherry

Tao Kong (corresponding author), Associate Professor, China Institute of Social Science Survey, Peking

University, Beijing, China; Email: tao.kong@pku.edu.cn. We thank conference and seminar participants

from the China Academy of Social Sciences, the ANU and Oxford University for valuable comments. An

earlier version of this paper was included in the ANU China Update Conference 2012 book series.

16 Jane Golley, Sherry Tao Kong / 15–37, Vol. 21, No. 2, 2013

©2013 The Authors

China & World Economy ©2013 Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

students in rural China were attending junior high school (REAP, 2009). In contrast,children

born in Beijing, Shanghai or Tianjin were 35 times more likely to attend college than children

born in rural areas. The returns to education have increased almost universally in China as

a result of labor market reforms (e.g. Yang, 2005; Zhang et al., 2005, 2007; Liu et al., 2010).

However, factors such as constraints to permanent rural-to-urban migration (e.g. Zhao,

1999; Kong et al., 2010; Golley and Meng, 2011; Knight et al., 2011) and segmentation in

urban labor markets (e.g. D

é

murger et al., 2007a,b, 2009; Knight et al., 2011) continue to

engender a difference in the incentives for pursuing higher education across the urban,

rural and migrant populations. The combination of uneven development in education and

urban-biased labor market reforms has undoubtedly contributed to the gap between urban

and rural incomes in China, which remains an important source of China’s overall inequality

(Sicular et al., 2005).

To formulate policies that can effectively address the rural–urban gap, it is critical to

understand the relationship among each individual’s educational opportunities, achievements

and returns, and how it differs across various populations. Furthermore, the change in this

relationship over time hinges on intergenerational dynamics, and the educational achievements

and earning capacity of one generation (the result of a complex interaction of ability and

opportunity) impact on those of the next generation in a multitude of fashions.

The present paper investigates intergenerational patterns of educational attainment for

those born between 1941 and 1990 in 15 cities and rural areas across 9 provinces in China. We

are interested both in differences among the urban, migrant and rural populations at each

point in time, and in changes within and across each of these sub-populations over time.

Using the 2008 Rural–Urban Migration in China and Indonesia (RUMiCI) Survey, which

provides unique access to data on the educational attainments of up to three generations of

people across China’s rural, urban and migrant populations, we find that intergenerational

mobility, as reflected by low regression and correlation coefficients between a child and their

parents’ education levels, is higher in rural and migrant populations than in urban ones.

However, a closer look into the sources of this correlation reveals that the low persistence

observed in rural and migrant China stems from the fact that the vast majority of these

children complete only junior high school, with some children in the youngest cohorts actually

moving down the education ladder relative to their parents. In contrast, urban children largely

maintain as a high level of education as their parents. These results imply that a powerful

force is in play that could further worsen China’s overall inequality.

II. Literature Review

Most of the literature concerning intergenerational patterns of educational attainment in