Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/190255 
Year of Publication: 
2018
Series/Report no.: 
ADBI Working Paper No. 834
Publisher: 
Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI), Tokyo
Abstract: 
The phenomenon of son preference in the People's Republic of China and throughout much of Asia has been well documented. However, changing economic conditions, such as increases in educational attainment and employment opportunities for women and the rise in the prevalence of one-child families, have likely changed the incentives for parents to invest in daughters. In this paper we take advantage of data spanning three generations of Chinese families to examine the evolution of educational attainment for boys and girls and importantly the relative levels of schooling of each gender. We also use variation in the timing of compulsory schooling laws and the implementation of the one-child policy to assess the effect of these policy measures on the relative educational levels. We find a substantial narrowing of the gap between the schooling of boys and girls, so much so that girls now have more schooling on average than boys. In addition, public policy initiatives had a larger effect in rural than urban areas.
Subjects: 
compulsory schooling
one-child policy
gender differences in education
People's Republic of China
JEL: 
I2
I280
J13
J16
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by-nc-nd Logo
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
739.17 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.