We estimate the impact of two early commitment of financial aid (ECFA) programs—one at the start and one near the end of junior high school (seventh and ninth grades, respectively)—on the outcomes of poor, rural junior high students in China. Our results demonstrate that neither of the ECFA...

Recent studies have shown that only about two-thirds of the students from poor, rural areas in China finish junior high school and enter high school. One factor that may be behind the low rates of high school attendance is that students may be misinformed about the returns to schooling or lack...

A significant gap remains between rural and urban students in the rate of admission to senior high school. One reason for this gap may be high tuition and other school fees at the senior high school level. By reducing student expectations of attending high school, high tuition and school fees...

Purpose – This paper aims to explain why the quality of infrastructure projects in rural China differs from village to village and how project quality is correlated with project design attributes and governance factors. Design/methodology/approach – Using primary data collected by the...

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to explore whether an in-service life teacher training program can improve boarding students’ health, behavior, and academic performance. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted a cluster-randomized controlled trial to measure the effect of...

The rapid expansion of enrollment capacity in China's colleges since the late 1990s has come at the price of high tuition hikes. China's government has put forth financial aid programs to enable poor students to access higher education. Although studies have shown that poor high school students...

Using a survey of 19,977 children in two provinces, this paper explores the prevalence, correlates and potential consequences of poor vision among children in China's vast but understudied rural areas. We find that 24% of sample students suffer from reduced uncorrected visual acuity in either...

This article exploits a randomised controlled trial to evaluate the impact of an intensive, short-term inservice teacher training programme on the performance of English teachers in Beijing migrant schools and their students. The results show no significant impacts of teacher training on either...

The overall goal of the paper is to understand the progress of the implementation of China’s New Cooperative Medical System (NCMS) program. In the paper we seek to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the program and understand its effect on rural residents using a panel of...