Abstract
As a result of China’s rapid economic development, its gross domestic product (GDP) increased by almost 28 times from US$360.9 billion in 1990 to US$11.2 trillion in 2016 (The World Bank 2017). A powerful pillar of China’s economic growth is the increase in the educational level of its population. Indeed, a country’s economic growth depends on a highly educated workforce. The scope of this chapter is confined to the analyses of educational attainment in compulsory education in relation to equality and equity issues. Based on data collected from a national sample in China in 2014, this chapter examines the combined effects of hukou status, economic regions, rural and urban residency, and gender on the educational attainment of Chinese people aged 12–43. In this study, educational attainment is defined as the actual number of years of completed schooling and the completion of the mandatory nine years of education, including elementary and junior high school. The results are interpreted with specific regard to the reasons for the disparities in the educational opportunities of rural migrant and urban residents. Based on these findings and the extant literature, several policy recommendations for improvement are suggested.
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Notes
- 1.
We used the standardized age range of the total population on control for variants of age composition across groups. Here is an example of senior high-school completion rate for city migrants (urban residence with rural hukou) ages 19–43:
The aged-adjusted high-school completion rate for migrant workers 19–43 years old is calculated by: (a) dividing the numbers of high-school graduates for migrant works in each age category; (b) multiplying the migrant workers’ graduation rates by the standard population (total number of people of urban residence with urban hukou, urban residence with rural hukou, rural residence with urban hukou, and rural residence with rural hukou) in the corresponding age categories; (c) summing the products; and (d) dividing by the total standard population (people in all age categories combined). The mathematical formula is as follows:
$$ \left[\sum \left(\mathrm{Ea}/\mathrm{Pa}\right)\times \mathrm{Ps}\mathrm{a}\right]\div \mathrm{Ps}\times 100 $$Ea = Number of city migrants completing senior high schools in age group a
Pa = Number of city migrants in age group a
Psa = Standard population in age group a
Ps = Total standard population in all age categories
We accept age-standardized mean years of schooling and completion rates as indices of educational attainment. These mean scores are, however, different from the means predicted using regression models that control for hukou, rural/city residence, economic regions, and gender.
- 2.
In our paper for the Annual Meeting of American Educational Research Association in 2018 (Wang et al. 2018), we fitted a least squares regression model to the data to examine the significance of each of the major variables under the simultaneous effects of all variables (see Table 6 for Model 1). All major variables are significant at p ≥ 0.001. Holding other variables equally, an individual with an urban hukou has, on average, 3.41 more years of schooling. This aligns with the findings from the research literature that individuals residing in urban areas but with rural hukou have generally been disadvantaged in education.
We then ran a multiple regression with total years of schooling as the numerical dependent variable (see Table 7 of Model 2) and two logistic regressions with completion of elementary school and completion of junior high school as the binary categorical dependent variables for the four types of regions separately (see Tables 8 and 9 of Model 3), since we wanted to know if the pattern of impact of hukou and location is consistent across the four types of regions.
The results in Table 7 show that people living in the cities with urban hukou have higher levels of education than their counterparts living in rural areas, regardless of gender and/or region. Migrants living in cities with rural hukou have also received more education than those in rural areas with rural hukou. In general, educational gaps are greater between city people with urban hukou and migrants (urban residents with rural hukou), compared with the gap between migrant people and rural residents with rural hukou. Gaps in the educational attainment of people with different types of hukous tend to be smaller in wealthier regions (1 and 2) than in poorer ones (3 and 4).
Our next model (Model 3) examines what factors affect people’s completion of elementary schooling and junior high school. The interaction effects of hukou, location, and gender are estimated as well. Table 8 presents the results of logistic regression analyses with interactions. People with urban hukou are more likely to complete elementary education than people with rural hukou. In terms of interaction effects, only the effect of male individuals from Region 3 with rural hukou is significantly negative. It is likely that migrant males are less likely to complete elementary school than rural men with rural hukou. In the same vein, the results in Table 9 indicate that, when holding the other variables constant, urban males in Region 3 (regardless of the types of hukou) have a greater possibility of dropping out of junior high schools than their female counterparts do.
- 3.
The State Council’s (2001) Decision on the Improving and Reforming of Basic Education highlighted that governments at all levels should pay attention to migrant children’s compulsory education, governments of high emigration areas should be the primary providers for migrant children’s compulsory education, and full-time public schools should be the primary receivers of migrant children. This later became known as the “Two Primaries” Policy and is the standard by which all related issues are judged.
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Wang, X., Rong, X.L. (2019). Variations in Educational Inequalities in China and Policy Implications. In: Yu, J., Guo, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Local Governance in Contemporary China. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2799-5_25
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