The heterogeneous effects of education on relative deprivation: evidence from migrants in China

Yucheng Sun and Zhewen Pan

Applied Economics Letters, 2025, vol. 32, issue 2, 270-275

Abstract: The relative deprivation generally shifts people’s immigrant preference. But when a person became a migrant, whether education can eliminate the relative deprivation is not explored. In this paper, we investigate the causal effects of migrants’ education on relative deprivation in China. Motivated by returns to education varying across individuals, we employ the marginal treatment effect framework based on data from China Migrant Dynamic Survey. We find substantially heterogeneous effects that migrants with higher resistance to treatment have a larger eliminating effect on relative deprivation than those with smaller resistance to treatment, giving rise to a pattern of reverse selection on gains. Several treatment parameters (and their corresponding weights) confirm the robustness of our results. Finally, the counterfactual analysis shows that the treatment effect heterogeneity is almost wholly explained by the potential degree of relative deprivation in the treated state. Policies aiming to attract students to complete compulsory education would have the eradication effects on migrants’ relative deprivation, especially for high-resistance students.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/13504851.2023.2266596

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