School Quality and Peer Effects: Explaining Differences in Academic Performance between China’s Migrant and Rural Students

Xiaobing Wang, Zhouhang Yuan, Shi Min and Scott Rozelle

Journal of Development Studies, 2021, vol. 57, issue 5, 842-858

Abstract: In China, parents have a choice to either send their children to private migrant schools in urban areas or to keep them in their own county. It is unclear whether the academic differences of students in rural schools and those in private migrant schools is due to the quality of schools, the quality of students/peers, or the ways that peer effects interact with the quality of the school. Using survey data from students with rural residency who attended either migrant schools or rural public schools, we measure how differences in the quality of the types of schools and how the effect of peers differs in high- versus low-quality schools. An instrumental variable approach is used to identify the causality of a student’s peers on his or her academic outcomes and within the context of each of the school venues. The gap in student academic performance is explained by the differences in each student’s peers as and in how peers interact in the schooling environments. The analysis also demonstrates that there is a significant interaction effect between one’s peers and the quality of a student’s school environment. We found that school quality has a complementary effect with peers on student academic performance.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2020.1769074

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