IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/chinae/v30y2022i4p4-30.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Education Universalization, Rural School Participation, and Population Density

Author

Listed:
  • Xi Zhang
  • Scott Rozelle

Abstract

In many developing countries, low population density may be a major reason for low school participation in rural areas, and the problem is likely to worsen with rapid urbanization. However, few studies have investigated empirically the role of population density in rural education, especially the moderating effect of population density on the outcomes of education policies. This study aims to fill this gap in the literature. From 1999 through the early 2000s, China launched a set of major nationwide policies aimed at universalizing 9‐year compulsory education in rural areas. Using difference‐in‐differences and triple difference strategies, we show that the policies significantly increased the probability of junior high school enrollment of rural children and, more importantly, these policies were more effective in densely populated regions. These findings confirm the importance of population density to rural education.

Suggested Citation

  • Xi Zhang & Scott Rozelle, 2022. "Education Universalization, Rural School Participation, and Population Density," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 30(4), pages 4-30, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:chinae:v:30:y:2022:i:4:p:4-30
    DOI: 10.1111/cwe.12426
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/cwe.12426
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/cwe.12426?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chyi, Hau & Zhou, Bo, 2014. "The effects of tuition reforms on school enrollment in rural China," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 104-123.
    2. Huang, Wei, 2015. "Understanding the Effects of Education on Health: Evidence from China," IZA Discussion Papers 9225, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Alan B. Krueger & Mikael Lindahl, 2000. "Education for Growth: Why and For Whom?," Working Papers 808, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    4. Fleisher, Belton & Li, Haizheng & Zhao, Min Qiang, 2010. "Human capital, economic growth, and regional inequality in China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(2), pages 215-231, July.
    5. Gary Solon & Steven J. Haider & Jeffrey M. Wooldridge, 2015. "What Are We Weighting For?," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 50(2), pages 301-316.
    6. Mikael Lindahl & Alan B. Krueger, 2001. "Education for Growth: Why and for Whom?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 39(4), pages 1101-1136, December.
    7. Wang, Yiru, 2018. "Educational and nutritional consequences of education subsidy in rural China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 167-180.
    8. Esther Duflo, 2001. "Schooling and Labor Market Consequences of School Construction in Indonesia: Evidence from an Unusual Policy Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(4), pages 795-813, September.
    9. John Whalley & Xiliang Zhao, 2010. "The Contribution of Human Capital to China's Economic Growth," NBER Working Papers 16592, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Zhao, Meng & Glewwe, Paul, 2010. "What determines basic school attainment in developing countries? Evidence from rural China," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 451-460, June.
    11. Li, Li & Liu, Haoming, 2014. "Primary school availability and middle school education in rural China," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 24-40.
    12. Brown, Philip H. & Park, Albert, 2002. "Education and poverty in rural China," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 21(6), pages 523-541, December.
    13. Ning Jia & Huiyong Zhong, 2022. "The Causes and Consequences of China's Municipal Amalgamations: Evidence from Population Redistribution," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 30(4), pages 174-200, July.
    14. Yi Che & Lei Zhang, 2018. "Human Capital, Technology Adoption and Firm Performance: Impacts of China's Higher Education Expansion in the Late 1990s," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(614), pages 2282-2320, September.
    15. Lu, Ming & Zhang, Xi, 2019. "Towards an intelligent country: China’s higher education expansion and rural children’s senior high school participation," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 1-1.
    16. Haiyun Zhao, 2010. "Economics education in China," International Journal of Pluralism and Economics Education, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 1(4), pages 303-316.
    17. James Alm & Yongzheng Liu, 2013. "Did China's Tax-for-Fee Reform Improve Farmers' Welfare in Rural Areas?," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(4), pages 516-532, April.
    18. Andrews, Matthew & Duncombe, William & Yinger, John, 2002. "Revisiting economies of size in American education: are we any closer to a consensus?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 245-262, June.
    19. K. Chakraborty & B. Biswas & WC. Lewis, 2000. "Economies of scale in public education: an econometric analysis," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 18(2), pages 238-247, April.
    20. Macarena Ares Abalde, 2014. "School Size Policies: A Literature Review," OECD Education Working Papers 106, OECD Publishing.
    21. Cai, Weixian & Chen, Gong & Zhu, Feng, 2017. "Has the compulsory school merger program reduced the welfare of rural residents in China?," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 123-141.
    22. Xinzheng Shi, 2016. "The Impact of Educational Fee Reduction Reform on School Enrolment in Rural China," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 52(12), pages 1791-1809, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jian Li & Eryong Xue, 2022. "Unpacking the Policies, Historical Stages, and Themes of the Education Equality for Educational Sustainable Development: Evidence from China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(17), pages 1-15, August.
    2. Mingzhao Xiong & Wenqi Li & Brian Sheng Xian Teo & Jaizah Othman, 2022. "Can China’s Digital Inclusive Finance Alleviate Rural Poverty? An Empirical Analysis from the Perspective of Regional Economic Development and an Income Gap," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(24), pages 1-18, December.
    3. Binkai Chen & Ming Lu, 2022. "Guest Editors' Words," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 30(4), pages 1-3, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Xinzheng Shi, 2016. "The Impact of Educational Fee Reduction Reform on School Enrolment in Rural China," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 52(12), pages 1791-1809, December.
    2. Fang Chang & Wenbin Min & Yaojiang Shi & Kaleigh Kenny & Prashant Loyalka, 2016. "Educational Expectations and Dropout Behavior among Junior High Students in Rural China," China & World Economy, Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 24(3), pages 67-85, May.
    3. Cui, Ying & Liu, Hong & Zhao, Liqiu, 2019. "Mother's education and child development: Evidence from the compulsory school reform in China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(3), pages 669-692.
    4. Zhang, Haifeng & Zhang, Hongliang & Zhang, Junsen, 2015. "Demographic age structure and economic development: Evidence from Chinese provinces," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 170-185.
    5. Michael Clemens, 2004. "The Long Walk to School: International Education Goals in Historical Perspective," Working Papers 37, Center for Global Development.
    6. Yitao Jiang & Xiaojun Shi & Shunming Zhang & Jingjing Ji, 2011. "The threshold effect of high‐level human capital investment on China's urban‐rural income gap," China Agricultural Economic Review, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 3(3), pages 297-320, September.
    7. Li, Tingting & Wang, Yong, 2018. "Growth channels of human capital: A Chinese panel data study," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 309-322.
    8. Romano, Richard E. & Tampieri, Alessandro, 2016. "Arts vs engineering: Choosing consumption of and investment in education," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(3), pages 493-510.
    9. Zhou, Lei & Jiang, Bo & Wang, Jingxi, 2020. "Do cash transfers have impacts on student Academic, cognitive, and enrollment outcomes? Evidence from rural China," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    10. Mine Yilmazer & Serkan inar, 2015. "Human Capabilities and Economic Growth: A Comparative Human Capability Index," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 5(4), pages 843-853.
    11. Zhang, Xiaobei & Li, Haizheng & Wang, Xiaojun & Fleisher, Belton M., 2019. "Human Capital and the Economic Convergence Mechanism: Evidence from China," IZA Discussion Papers 12224, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    12. Haepp, Tobias & Lyu, Lidan, 2018. "The Impact of Primary School Investment Reallocation on Educational Attainment in Rural Areas of the People’s Republic of China," ADBI Working Papers 821, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    13. Lu, Ming & Zhang, Xi, 2019. "Towards an intelligent country: China’s higher education expansion and rural children’s senior high school participation," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 1-1.
    14. Yao Zhao & Xuena Kong & Mahmood Ahmad & Zahoor Ahmed, 2023. "Digital Economy, Industrial Structure, and Environmental Quality: Assessing the Roles of Educational Investment, Green Innovation, and Economic Globalization," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-24, January.
    15. Zhang, Xiaobei & Wang, Xiaojun, 2021. "Measures of human capital and the mechanics of economic growth," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 68(C).
    16. Leonardo Bonilla-Mejía & Eduard F. Martínez-González, 2017. "Educación Escolar para la Inclusión y la Transformación Social en el Caribe Colombiano," Documentos de Trabajo Sobre Economía Regional y Urbana 15912, Banco de la República, Economía Regional.
    17. Shuang Chen, 2020. "Parental Investment After the Birth of a Sibling: The Effect of Family Size in Low-Fertility China," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 57(6), pages 2085-2111, December.
    18. Gabriele Cappelli & Michelangelo Vasta, 2021. "A “Silent Revolution”: school reforms and Italy’s educational gender gap in the Liberal Age (1861–1921)," Cliometrica, Springer;Cliometric Society (Association Francaise de Cliométrie), vol. 15(1), pages 203-229, January.
    19. Castelló-Climent, Amparo & Hidalgo-Cabrillana, Ana, 2012. "The role of educational quality and quantity in the process of economic development," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 391-409.
    20. Duflo, Esther, 2004. "The medium run effects of educational expansion: evidence from a large school construction program in Indonesia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(1), pages 163-197, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:chinae:v:30:y:2022:i:4:p:4-30. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iwepacn.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.