Migrant Opportunity and the Educational Attainment of Youth in Rural China

Alan de Brauw () and John Giles ()

No 2326, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Abstract: In this paper, we investigate how reductions of barriers to migration affect the decision of middle school graduates to attend high school in rural China. Change in the cost of migration is identified using exogenous variation across counties in the timing of national identity card distribution, which made it easier for rural migrants to register as temporary residents in urban destinations. We show that timing of ID card distribution is unrelated to local rainfall shocks affecting demand for migration, and not related to proxies reflecting time-varying changes in village policy or administrative capacity. We find a robust negative relationship between migrant opportunity and high school enrollment. The mechanisms behind the negative relationship are suggested by observed increases in subsequent local and migrant non-agricultural employment of high school age young adults as the size of the current village migrant network increases.

Keywords: migration; educational attainment; rural China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O12 O15 J22 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-dev, nep-edu, nep-lab, nep-sea and nep-tra
Date: 2006-09
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
ftp://repec.iza.org/RePEc/Discussionpaper/dp2326.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Migrant opportunity and the educational attainment of youth in rural China (2008)
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2326

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)
Address: IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Mark Fallak ().