Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/325088 
Year of Publication: 
2025
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 18030
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
The changing pattern of quality in China's rural schools across time and province is extracted from the differential labor market earnings of rural migrant workers. Variations in rates of return to years of schooling across migrant workers working in the same urban labor market but having different sites of basic education provide for direct estimation of provincial school quality. Corroborating this approach, these school quality estimates prove to be highly correlated with provincial cognitive skill test scores for the same demographic group. Returns to quality increase with economic development level of destination cities. Importantly, quality appears higher and provincial variation appears lower for younger cohorts, indicating at least partial effectiveness of more recent policies aimed at improving rural school quality across provinces. Surprisingly, however, provincial variations in quality are uncorrelated with teacher-student ratio or per student spending.
Subjects: 
migration
school quality
China
JEL: 
I25
J6
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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