EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Returns to College Education of Chinese Manufacturing Employees: Who Benefits More?

Yuheng Lin, Dooruj Rambaccussing and Yu Zhu
Additional contact information
Yuheng Lin: University of Dundee
Dooruj Rambaccussing: University of Dundee

No 17980, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Using the China Employer-Employee Survey (CEES) data, this study examines the returns to college education for employees across China’s manufacturing industry, most of them work in small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). Our baseline model finds that while the 1999 higher education (HE) expansion has no significant impact on college enrollment for male employees, it significantly increases college enrollment for female employees by 23.7% in the manufacturing sector. College education significantly increases the returns by 45.20% for males and 88.33% for females. Moreover, there is heterogeneity in the effects by potential gains: individuals who failed to attend college would have had a higher return compared to college graduates, indicating reverse selection into HE. Further analysis reveals that the effects are more pronounced among female managers, middle birth cohorts (born between 1984 and 1987), female vocation-track degree holders, and STEM graduates. Additionally, college education facilitates employment in roles requiring cognitive skills and reduces the likelihood of female employees performing physically demanding tasks.

Keywords: marginal treat- ment effect; manufacturing industry; China employer-employee survey; returns to college education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 I26 J31 L60 O14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp17980.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17980

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 of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().

 
Page updated 2025-07-22
Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17980