2024/08/23 by Ande Shen, Jiwei Zhou, Shen, Ande +1
Social Sciences · #Education Systems and Policy #Education and Vocational Training #FOS: Economics and business #General Economics (econ.GN) #Global Educational Reforms and Inequalities
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2408.12915
openalex publication_date 2024/08/23 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This paper explores the causal impact of education opportunities on rural areas by exploiting the higher education expansion (HEE) in China in 1999. By utilizing the detailed census data, the cohort-based difference-in-differences design indicates that the HEE increased college attendance and encouraged more people to attend senior high schools and that the effect is more significant in rural areas. Then we apply a similar approach to a novel panel data set of rural villages and households to examine the effect of education opportunities on rural areas. We find contrasting impacts on income and life quality between villages and households. Villages in provinces with higher HEE magnitudes underwent a drop in the average income and worse living facilities. On the contrary, households sending out migrants after the HEE experienced an increase in their per capita income. The phenomenon where villages experienced a ``brain drain'' and households with migrants gained after the HEE is explained by the fact that education could serve as a way to overcome the barrier of rural-urban migration. Our findings highlight the opposed impacts of education opportunities on rural development and household welfare in rural areas.