TY - JOUR
T1 - Returns to higher education in China – evidence from the 1999 higher education expansion using a fuzzy regression discontinuity
AU - Dai, Fengyan
AU - Cai, Fang
AU - Zhu, Yu
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank participants of the 17th IZA/SOLE Transatlantic Meeting of Labour Economics, the 2018 China Meeting of the Econometric Society and seminar at Shanghai Lixin University of Accounting and Finance for helpful comments. We are indebted to Gerard Pfann and Lei Xu for suggestions. Fengyan Dai acknowledges financial support from the Major Project of National Social Science Fund of China (project number: 19ZDA116).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - China experienced a 47% expansion in higher education enrolment between 1998 and 1999 and a sixfold expansion in the decade to 2008. Using a fuzzy discontinuity in the months of births, we show that the 1999 expansion increased education by roughly 1 year around the cut-off point. Importantly, each additional year of university education induced by the expansion increases monthly earnings by 24%, whereas the corresponding OLS estimate is only 8%. Our findings are insensitive to alternative window widths, functional forms or the exclusion of the self-employed.
AB - China experienced a 47% expansion in higher education enrolment between 1998 and 1999 and a sixfold expansion in the decade to 2008. Using a fuzzy discontinuity in the months of births, we show that the 1999 expansion increased education by roughly 1 year around the cut-off point. Importantly, each additional year of university education induced by the expansion increases monthly earnings by 24%, whereas the corresponding OLS estimate is only 8%. Our findings are insensitive to alternative window widths, functional forms or the exclusion of the self-employed.
KW - China
KW - Returns to higher education
KW - higher education expansion
KW - regression discontinuity design
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85099351318&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/13504851.2020.1871465
DO - 10.1080/13504851.2020.1871465
M3 - Article
SN - 1350-4851
VL - 29
SP - 489
EP - 494
JO - Applied Economics Letters
JF - Applied Economics Letters
IS - 6
ER -