English language requirement and educational inequality: Evidence from 16 million college applicants in China

Hongbin Li, Lingsheng Meng, Kai Mu and Shaoda Wang

Journal of Development Economics, 2024, vol. 168, issue C

Abstract: This paper studies the unintended effect of English language requirement on educational inequality by investigating how the staggered rollout of English listening tests in China’s high-stakes National College Entrance Exam (NCEE) affected the rural–urban gap in college access. Leveraging administrative data covering the universe of NCEE participants between 1999 and 2003, we find that the introduction of English listening tests significantly lowered rural students’ exam score percentile ranks relative to their urban counterparts, resulting in a 30% increase in the rural–urban gap in college access. Our back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that, as a result of this policy change, more than 54,000 rural students lost college seats to their urban peers between 1999 and 2003, and another 11,000 rural students who elite colleges could have admitted ended up in non-elite colleges, causing them significant future income losses.

Keywords: Globalization; English education; Human capital; Inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F69 I24 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387824000208
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:deveco:v:168:y:2024:i:c:s0304387824000208

DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2024.103271

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Development Economics is currently edited by M. R. Rosenzweig

More articles in Journal of Development Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().