Changes over time in the return to education in urban China: Conventional and ORU estimates

Abstract

Studies of the return to education in urban China have reported that this has increased over time, and that females typically have a higher return than males. In this paper we adopt a framework provided by the over education/required education/under education literature, and the decomposition developed by Chiswick and Miller (2008), to investigate the reasons for these findings. The finding by Chen and Hamori (2009), from analysis of data for 2004 and 2006, of the return to schooling for males exceeding that for females, is also examined using this decomposition.

Higher Education Expansion and Return to Education in China: Evidence from CGSS2005 and CGSS2013

“…It is shown that from 2005 to 2013, IRR decreased from 8.6% to 7.8% for the total sample, from 8.3% to 7.4% for men, from 9.0% to 8.2% for women. These results are similar to Heckman and Li (2004), Zhang et al (2007), Giles, Park and Wang (2008), Chen and Hamori (2009), Ge and Yang (2011), Kang and Peng (2012), Liu and Zhang (2012), Ren and Miller (2012). As shown in Appendix Table 1, the IRR values in these studies are in the range from 1.4 (Byron and Manaloto, 1990) to 44.0 in urban China.…”

Patterns of inequalities in public transfers by gender in China

“…In China, a tertiary education is a golden ticket for rural youth to gain an urban hukou status and for holding a professional, managerial or government position (Yueng 2013). The economic returns to colleges (including vocational and academic colleges) are estimated to be substantially larger than the returns to high schools (Li et al 2012), and furthermore, the returns to education for females are even higher than those for males as documented in many studies (Ren and Miller 2012a, Ren and Miller 2012b, Wang 2013). Hence, gender-balanced public spending on education, especially on the tertiary education, would contribute to reducing gender gaps in labor market outcomes, and also in the entitlement to health insurance and pension benefits at later ages in the future.…”

Labor Market Returns to Education and English Language Skills in the People's Republic of China: An Update

“…Apart from the findings using CHIP dataset, researchers who employed data from other household surveys during this period found comparatively low rates of return to Bishop and Chiou (2004) 1988-1995OLS 2.8 (1988-5.6 (1995) Li and Luo (2004) 1995 OLS; IV; GMM 7. 5-8.9;15.3-15.6;15.0 Appleton, Song, and Xia (2005) 1988OLS 3.6 (1988)-7.5 (2002) Bishop, Luo, and Wang (2005) 1988-1995OLS 1.5 (1988)-4.4 (1995 Hauser and Xie (2005) 1988-1995 OLS 2.0 (1988)-7.4 (1995) Knight and Song (2005) 1995-1999 OLS 3.2 (1995)-4.1 (1999) Yang (2005) 1988-1995OLS 3.3-3.9 (1988 to 5.9-7.3 (1995 Chen and Hamori (2009) 2004-2006 OLS; IV 7.7 (female), 8.1 (male), 7.9 (married women), 8.0 (married men); 14.5 (married women), 12.6 (married men) Qiu and Hudson (2010) 1989-2000 OLS 5.1-6.9 Kang and Peng (2012) 1989 OLS; IV 2.2 (1989, female)-10.3 (2009, female), 2.6-7.0 (male); 5.7-8.9 (female), 5.6-11.0 (male) Ren and Miller (2012) Ge an...…”

“…For example, research using another widely used dataset, CHNS, found that the rate of return rose sharply to 6.9% in 2000 (Qiu and Hudson 2010), 8.1% in 2004(Chen and Hamori 2009, and around 9% in 2006 (Fang et al 2012) in urban areas. Again, based on the CHNS dataset, Ren and Miller (2012) found that the returns to women increased from 2% in 1993 to 7% in 2004, while the returns to men increased from 0.8% to 3.1%. Similarly, Kang and Peng (2012) documented a larger increase in returns to education for Chinese women than men using the expanded CHNS dataset from 1989 to 2009.…”