The Scarring Effects of College Education Deprivation during China’s Cultural Revolution

Hongbin Li and Lingsheng Meng

Economic Development and Cultural Change, 2022, vol. 70, issue 3, 981 - 1016

Abstract: China’s college enrollment system came to a sudden halt as the Cultural Revolution started. Virtually no students were admitted to colleges from 1966 to 1969. We estimate a marked downward shift in college completion rates for the affected cohorts. Using a regression discontinuity approach, we show that these individuals experienced a sizable reduction in labor supply, earnings, and wealth after some 30 years, which can be attributed to the loss of access to college education. Our results also suggest that the affected generation had made efforts to make up for their loss of education later in life.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/713935 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/713935 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

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:ucp:ecdecc:doi:10.1086/713935

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Economic Development and Cultural Change from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().