The medium-run effect of China's higher education expansion on the unemployment of college graduates

Chunbing Xing, Peng Yang and Zhilong Li

China Economic Review, 2018, vol. 51, issue C, 181-193

Abstract: China's unemployment rate for new college graduates has increased significantly in recent years, and many people attribute this increase to the higher education expansion policy. In this paper, we use three nationally representative data sets for 2000, 2005, and 2010 to investigate the short and medium term effects of the expansion policy on the unemployment of college graduates. Treating higher education expansion as an exogenous shock and using a difference-in-difference (DID) strategy, we find that this policy increased the unemployment rate of new college graduates in the short run, but the unemployment rate kept declining and the dis-employment effect mostly disappeared after five years. We also find some heterogeneous effects by gender, region, and city.

Keywords: Higher education; Unemployment; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 I23 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:chieco:v:51:y:2018:i:c:p:181-193

DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2017.05.005

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