This paper examines the emergence of labour markets in China through the lens of returns to rural education. It demonstrates that methodology plays an important role in explaining the low estimates of returns in previous studies. When wages are defined on an hourly basis and sample selectivity...

This paper examines the determinants of child educational attainment.\r\nIn addition to those examined in previous studies, it is found that maternal\r\nchildcare is another important determinant of child educational\r\nattainment. The results are robust after controlling for endogeneity....

Previous studies have found that the returns to education in rural China are far lower than\r\nestimates for market economies. In this paper, we try to determine why previous estimates are\r\nso low. Whereas estimates for the early 1990s average 2.3 percent, we find an average return\r\nof 6.4...

China has made remarkable progress along the path of economic transformation over the past three decades. To continue its rapid growth in an economy with increasingly higher wages, China’s key challenge is whether it can become competitive in quasi-skilled and skilled industrial sectors so...

Testing the tradeoff between child quantity and quality within a family is complicated by the endogeneity of family size. Using data from the Chinese Population \r\nCensus, this paper examines the effect of family size on child educational attainment \r\nin China. We find a negative correlation...

Fundamental changes in China’s finance system for social services have\r\ndecentralized responsibilities for provision to lower levels of government and\r\nincreased costs to individuals. The more localized, market-oriented approaches to\r\nsocial service provision, together with rising...

The overall goal of this paper is to contribute to the ongoing assessment of\r\nChina’s rural labor markets. To meet this goal, we have three specific objectives. First,\r\nwe will provide an update of the trends in off-farm labor participation and wages of the\r\nsample households and examine...

The main goal of this paper is to document the nature of boarding schools and empirically analyze the difference of nutrition intake and malnutrition status between boarding and non-boarding students in western rural China. By using two data sets about boarding schools and boarding students in...