Three Generations of Changing Gender Patterns of Schooling in the People’s Republic of China

Kathleen McGarry and Xiaoting Sun
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Kathleen McGarry: Asian Development Bank Institute
Xiaoting Sun: Asian Development Bank Institute

No 834, ADBI Working Papers from Asian Development Bank Institute

Abstract: The phenomenon of son preference in the People’s Republic of China and throughout much of Asia has been well documented. However, changing economic conditions, such as increases in educational attainment and employment opportunities for women and the rise in the prevalence of one-child families, have likely changed the incentives for parents to invest in daughters. We take advantage of data spanning three generations of Chinese families to examine the evolution of educational attainment for boys and girls and importantly the relative levels of schooling of each gender. We also use variation in the timing of compulsory schooling laws and the implementation of the one-child policy to assess the effect of these policy measures on the relative educational levels. We find a substantial narrowing of the gap between the schooling of boys and girls, so much so that girls now have more schooling on average than boys. In addition, public policy initiatives had a larger effect in rural than urban areas.

Keywords: compulsory schooling; one-child policy; gender differences in education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 J13 J16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2018-04-24
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-knm, nep-sea and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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