Returns to Higher Education in China: Evidence from the 1999 Higher Education Expansion Using Fuzzy Regression Discontinuity

Fengyan Dai (), Fang Cai () and Yu Zhu
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Fengyan Dai: Nanjing University of Finance and Economics
Fang Cai: Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

No 11735, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: China experienced a 47% expansion in higher education enrolment between 1998 and 1999, and a six-fold expansion in the decade to 2008. In this paper, we explore a fuzzy discontinuity in the months of births induced by the expansion to study the returns to higher education in China. We find that the mean years of education increased by roughly one full year around the cut-off point of the 1999 expansion as defined by months of births. Importantly, each additional year of university education induced by the 1999 higher education expansion increases monthly wage income by 21%, whereas the corresponding OLS estimate is only 8%. Our findings are insensitive to alternative window widths, functional forms, or the exclusion of the self-employed. Moreover, the returns to degrees also appear to vary by gender, with lowers returns to women except when they are the only child in the family.

Keywords: regression discontinuity design; returns to higher education; higher education expansion; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 I26 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2018-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna, nep-lma and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published - short version published in: Applied Economics Letters, 2022, 29 (6), 489 - 494

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Journal Article: Returns to higher education in China – evidence from the 1999 higher education expansion using a fuzzy regression discontinuity (2022)
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