Education Policies and Intergenerational Educational Mobility in China: New Evidence for the 1986–95 Birth Cohort

Research on educational mobility for Chinese born in or before 1976–85 abounds. Although the Compulsory Education Law implemented in 1986 and the expansion of higher education introduced in 1999 changed Chinese millennials’ educational achievements, little is known about the educational mobility for the 1986–95 birth cohort and where it stands in the long-term trends. In this study, we calculated population-level educational percentile ranks by birth cohort and gender using data from the 1982 to 2020 China Censuses before linking these ranks to respondents in Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) or China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) to document 1986–95 birth cohort's educational mobility and its historical position. We also explored the role played by offspring's hukou origin (urban or rural) and ethnicity (Han or ethnic minorities). In the 1986–95 birth cohort, women's educational percentile ranks for secondary and tertiary levels fell below men's for the first time in China, suggesting that the proportion of women in higher education overtook men's. From 1976–85 to 1986–95 birth cohorts, while educational rank-rank correlations remained stable in all parent–child dyads and were constantly higher for offspring with urban hukou origin, there is suggestive evidence on increased educational mobility for women with rural hukou origin. Ethnicity differences were not found. Our findings imply that China's Compulsory Education Law and higher education expansion may have contributed to greater educational mobility for women with rural hukou origin in the 1986–95 birth cohort and their diminished disadvantage in education.