Title:
MIGRATION AND EDUCATION INEQUALITY IN CHINA: EVIDENCE FROM CHINA EDUCATION PANEL STUDY

Authors:
SUN Yixuan ,China

Abstract:
In virtue of unprecedented migration and existing hukou system in China, migrant children will have to cross the threshold of education inequality when they migrate into a new district. This problem has been existing in China since 1980s. Many research papers based on the education of migrant children and left-behind children have been emerging since then. As time went by, new policies have been set to help migrant children, while the scale of migrant children keeps on rising. In this study, we focus our concentration on the cognitive skills of middle school students in China. In empirical approach based on micro data, we find that migrant students perform worse than local students, and there exist educational gaps both within and across provinces/districts in China. We use OLS estimation on individual level first to figure out more reasons behind. The parameters for migrant status dummies and district dummies are significant. Then we verify that the ratio of local students in a school is a good attribute which can reflect the school quality. Since the gaps related to cognitive skills originate from two dimensions, composition heterogeneity and status discrimination, we conduct Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition approach on the data from first tier and second tier cities subsample in China. Outcomes show that migrant children not only have no advantage in endowments but also face enrollment barriers due to their migrant status. Despite that public schools are more open to migrant children than years before, disparity in the quality of public schools still exists. Thus, recessive discrimination is now replacing the position of overt discrimination. Based on the statistics and conclusions, we also propose some policy implications for local government and call on more concern and care to migrant teenagers